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.
JAMES A. BALDWINArtists are here to disturb the peace.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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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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For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for whatthey become.
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Remember, to hate, to be violent, is demeaning. It means you’re afraid of the other side of the coin — to love and be loved.
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The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
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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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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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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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It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
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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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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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I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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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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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.
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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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Hatred destroys the person who hates.
JAMES A. BALDWIN