American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
JAMES BALDWINTrue rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one’s life.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.
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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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People don’t have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love.
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Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
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People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.
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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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Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.
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For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.
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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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There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
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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.
JAMES BALDWIN -
The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.
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If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person.
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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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Perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.
JAMES BALDWIN