Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
JAMES BALDWINFreedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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Love was a country he knew nothing about.
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You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.
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People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
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I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
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Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
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Artists are here to disturb the peace.
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I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.
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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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To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.
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All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique.
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There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.
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Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
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True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one’s life.
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History is not a procession of illustrious people. It’s about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.
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The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
JAMES BALDWIN