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.
JAMES A. BALDWINThe male cannot bear very much humiliation; and he really cannot bear it, it obliterates him.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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… every human being is an unprecedented miracle.
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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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A man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.
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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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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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There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.
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There is a ‘sanctity’ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
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I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.
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For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for whatthey become.
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A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
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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 you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you’ll never make it.
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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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The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
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The determination to outwit one’s situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
JAMES A. BALDWIN