There is a ‘sanctity’ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
JAMES A. BALDWINIf we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, fire next time.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
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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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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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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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A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
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If the word ‘integration’ means anything, this is what it means that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.
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You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.
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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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There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
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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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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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The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
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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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… every human being is an unprecedented miracle.
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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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A devotion to humanity is… too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.
JAMES A. BALDWIN