People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
JAMES BALDWINNakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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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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Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
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Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.
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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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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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Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
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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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Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.
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If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe.
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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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Everybody’s journey is individual.
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I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.
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History is not a procession of illustrious people. It’s about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.
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It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
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People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
JAMES BALDWIN






