Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
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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Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
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It’s a miracle to realize that somebody loves you.
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Education is indoctrination if you’re white – subjugation if you’re black.
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Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford.
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I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also so much more than that. So are we all.
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Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.
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You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.
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Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.
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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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It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
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Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.
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We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them.
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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.
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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.
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When you’re writing you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.
JAMES BALDWIN