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. 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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Be careful what you set your heart upon – for it will surely be yours.
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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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… every human being is an unprecedented miracle.
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The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
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Rage can only with difficulty, and never entirely, be brought under the domination of the intelligence, and therefore is not susceptible to any arguments whatsoever.
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If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you’ll never make it.
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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. BALDWIN -
The real victim of bigotry is the white man who hides his weakness under his myth of superiority.
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I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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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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At bottom, to be colored means that one has been caught in some utterly unbelievable cosmic joke, a joke so hideous and in such bad taste that it defeats all categories and definitions.
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If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
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At four o’clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.
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If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, fire next time.
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN