The world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.
JAMES BALDWINLiterature is indispensable to the world.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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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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The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
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It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
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The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.
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Colour is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.
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All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
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If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody
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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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There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
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I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
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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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The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.
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To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.
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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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Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.
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Literature is indispensable to the world.
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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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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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No man is a devil in his own mind.
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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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Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
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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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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
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Love was a country he knew nothing about.
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If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
JAMES BALDWIN