We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them.
JAMES BALDWINYou were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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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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Love was a country he knew nothing about.
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The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
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It’s a miracle to realize that somebody loves you.
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Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
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Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
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There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.
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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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Love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don’t panic now.
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Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
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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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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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Colour is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.
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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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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.
JAMES BALDWIN