The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.
JAMES BALDWINYou 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.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
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Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
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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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No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
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To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.
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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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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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For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
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The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
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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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The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
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Literature is indispensable to the world.
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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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Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.
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Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.
JAMES BALDWIN