The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.
JAMES BALDWINPeople are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
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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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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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No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
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If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe.
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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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Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.
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American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
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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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There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
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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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No man is a devil in his own mind.
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It is easy to proclaim all souls equal in the sight of God; it is hard to make men equal on earth in the sight of men.
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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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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.
JAMES BALDWIN