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People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

James Baldwin

You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.
JAMES BALDWIN

Home Leave Pain Suffering
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.
JAMES BALDWIN

Deal Fear Hate Imagination Pain People Reason
You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.
JAMES BALDWIN

Black Black Lives Matter Born Emotional Face Reason Sad
Our crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it.
JAMES BALDWIN

Crown Inspirational Pay Wear
The world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.
JAMES BALDWIN

Forget Hero Madness Man Remember World
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.
JAMES BALDWIN

Beat Blood Inspirational Life Live Positive
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.
JAMES BALDWIN

Happen History Million Past People
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique.
JAMES BALDWIN

Art Confession Oblique One Liner
Perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.
JAMES BALDWIN

Coward Fools Man People Truth
Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.
JAMES BALDWIN

Deakness Deep Healing Life Walk Whistle
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.
JAMES BALDWIN

Believe Cheat Destiny Master People Strong
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.
JAMES BALDWIN

Pain People Suffering
Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
JAMES BALDWIN

Destroy Failure Hate Hatred Law Man
American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
JAMES BALDWIN

Beautiful History Terrible
No man is a devil in his own mind.
JAMES BALDWIN

Deep Devil Human Man Mind One Liner
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.
JAMES BALDWIN

Children Kid School Slave Smart Teaching

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

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People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

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