I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
JAMES A. BALDWINAnd 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.
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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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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Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.
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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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The determination to outwit one’s situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
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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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I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life.
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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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I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.
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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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… every human being is an unprecedented miracle.
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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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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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You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.
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A man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.
JAMES A. BALDWIN