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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

James Baldwin

There are people in the world for whom “coming along” is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.
JAMES BALDWIN

Arrive People Perpetual World
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 BALDWIN

Pain People Suffering
All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
JAMES BALDWIN

Hear Listen Music One Liner People
Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.
JAMES BALDWIN

Deakness Deep Healing Life Walk Whistle
Those kids aren’t dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don’t get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.
JAMES BALDWIN

Children Kid School Slave Smart Teaching
People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
JAMES BALDWIN

Friendship Invent Love Lover Parents People Unhappiness
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique.
JAMES BALDWIN

Art Confession Oblique One Liner
It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
JAMES BALDWIN

Distrustful Education Freedom Impossible Independence Mind Person
It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
JAMES BALDWIN

Mirror People Person Truth
There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
JAMES BALDWIN

Absolute Desolation Fear One Liner Splendor
If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe.
JAMES BALDWIN

Allow Citizen Destroy Permit Portion Society
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.
JAMES BALDWIN

Beginning Consicious Education Paradox Society
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also so much more than that. So are we all.
JAMES BALDWIN

Circumstances History Myself Time
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
JAMES BALDWIN

Broken Heart Heart History Pain Read Thinking World
Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
JAMES BALDWIN

Burn Funny House Humour Integrated
It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
JAMES BALDWIN

Enemy Ferocious Ignorance Justice Power

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

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