The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.
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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It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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Education is indoctrination if you’re white – subjugation if you’re black.
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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.
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Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore.
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Whoever debases others is debasing himself.
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If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
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Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
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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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The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
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There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
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The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
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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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People can cry much easier than they can change.
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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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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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Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
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Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.
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If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person.
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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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Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.
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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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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.
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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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You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.
JAMES BALDWIN