I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.
JAMES BALDWINThe most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
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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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There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.
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For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
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Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
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The world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.
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Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.
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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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The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.
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Literature is indispensable to the world.
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Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
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All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
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Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
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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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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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The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
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Education is indoctrination if you’re white – subjugation if you’re black.
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You write in order to change the world, if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.
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Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
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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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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.
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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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Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
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We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them.
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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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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.
JAMES BALDWIN