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 BALDWINOur crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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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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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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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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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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Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.
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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
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Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
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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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Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
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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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People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.
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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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Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.
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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
JAMES BALDWIN