The wretched of the earth do not decide to become extinct, they resolve, on the contrary, to multiply: life is their weapon against life, life is all that they have.
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 can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
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… every human being is an unprecedented miracle.
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It is impossible to pretend that you are not heir to, and therefore, however inadequately or unwillingly, responsible to, and for, the time and place that give you life — without becoming, at very best, a dangerously disoriented human being.
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Hatred destroys the person who hates.
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You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.
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The writer’s only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art
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The reason people think it’s important to be white is that they think it’s important not to be black.
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A devotion to humanity is… too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.
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And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.
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Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.
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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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The writer’s greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.
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Artists are here to disturb the peace.
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It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
JAMES A. BALDWIN