… every human being is an unprecedented miracle.
JAMES A. BALDWINFor these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for whatthey become.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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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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A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
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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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There is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one–you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at themercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you.
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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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One writes out of one thing only – one’s own experience.
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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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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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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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I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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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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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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Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.
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You write in order to change the world.
JAMES A. BALDWIN