The purpose of education…is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.
JAMES A. BALDWINWhen the South has trouble with its Negroes – when the Negroes refuse to remain in their “place” – it blames “outside agitators” and “Northern interference.” When the nation has trouble with the Northern Negro, it blames the Kremlin.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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I must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. . . . I know the spiritual wasteland to which that road leads . . . whoever debases others is debasing himself.
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Hatred destroys the person who hates.
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You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]
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When the South has trouble with its Negroes – when the Negroes refuse to remain in their “place” – it blames “outside agitators” and “Northern interference.” When the nation has trouble with the Northern Negro, it blames the Kremlin.
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.
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Be careful what you set your heart upon – for it will surely be yours.
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It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own: in the face of one’s victim, one sees oneself.
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I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life.
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It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
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You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.
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If the word ‘integration’ means anything, this is what it means that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.
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The determination to outwit one’s situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
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You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.
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Artists are here to disturb the peace.
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A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
JAMES A. BALDWIN