Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.
JAMES BALDWINKnow from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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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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All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
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Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.
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Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
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Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.
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Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.
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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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People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.
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Love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don’t panic now.
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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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It is easy to proclaim all souls equal in the sight of God; it is hard to make men equal on earth in the sight of men.
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Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
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For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
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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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I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.
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People can cry much easier than they can change.
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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.
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To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.
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Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford.
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If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person.
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Perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.
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It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
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There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
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There are people in the world for whom “coming along” is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.
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Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.
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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.
JAMES BALDWIN