There is a ‘sanctity’ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
JAMES A. BALDWINIt 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.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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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.
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The real victim of bigotry is the white man who hides his weakness under his myth of superiority.
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The male cannot bear very much humiliation; and he really cannot bear it, it obliterates him.
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Be careful what you set your heart upon – for it will surely be yours.
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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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The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
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I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.
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… every human being is an unprecedented miracle.
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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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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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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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To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
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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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For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for whatthey become.
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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. BALDWIN