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.
JAMES BALDWINYou think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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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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People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
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There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.
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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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Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.
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The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.
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Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
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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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All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
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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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It is easy to proclaim all souls equal in the sight of God; it is hard to make men equal on earth in the sight of men.
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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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You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.
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No man is a devil in his own mind.
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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