Colour is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.
JAMES BALDWINNobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
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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If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person.
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Education is indoctrination if you’re white – subjugation if you’re black.
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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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People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
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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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Perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.
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True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one’s life.
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Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity.
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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.
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American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
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I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.
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The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
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Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.
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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