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People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.

James Baldwin

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
There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.
JAMES BALDWIN

Deep Human Nature Life One Liner Truth
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.
JAMES BALDWIN

Battle Beginning Grow Love Thinking War
Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.
JAMES BALDWIN

Hatred Negativity One Liner Suicide
The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
JAMES BALDWIN

Art Force Reality Represent
Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
JAMES BALDWIN

Destroy Failure Hate Hatred Law Man
Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
JAMES BALDWIN

DAngry Heart Human Imagination People Purity
If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person.
JAMES BALDWIN

Deep Insult One Liner Person Respect Treat
The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.
JAMES BALDWIN

Situation Threat Victim Women
The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
JAMES BALDWIN

Courage Inspirational Leave Life 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
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
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
JAMES BALDWIN

Challenge Change Face Inspirational Life Success
Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
JAMES BALDWIN

Breakup World Change Identity Real Safety
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.
JAMES BALDWIN

Bread Float Human People Poison Surprise Water
Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
JAMES BALDWIN

Born Change Inspirational Shock State

People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.

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People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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