Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
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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It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
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The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
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Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore.
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There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
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Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
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All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique.
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It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
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Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.
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If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
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Perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.
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Our crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it.
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We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them.
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There are people in the world for whom “coming along” is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.
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Those kids aren’t dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don’t get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.
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American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
JAMES BALDWIN