The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
JAMES BALDWINMost of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.
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The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.
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The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.
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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
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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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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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If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody
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You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.
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Whoever debases others is debasing himself.
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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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People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.
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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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Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.
JAMES BALDWIN -
The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.
JAMES BALDWIN -
People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
JAMES BALDWIN