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.
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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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
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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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There are people in the world for whom “coming along” is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.
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It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
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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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Everybody’s journey is individual.
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Literature is indispensable to the world.
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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
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To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.
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Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford.
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There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.
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People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.
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The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
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It’s a miracle to realize that somebody loves you.
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When you’re writing you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.
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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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The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
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If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person.
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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 is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
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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 I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
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Artists are here to disturb the peace.
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Love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don’t panic now.
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No man is a devil in his own mind.
JAMES BALDWIN