People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
JAMES BALDWINThe 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.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity.
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No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
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Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford.
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The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
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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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Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.
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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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Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.
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The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
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There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
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All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique.
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All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
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You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.
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The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.
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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