You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.
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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Love was a country he knew nothing about.
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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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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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Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
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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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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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The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
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Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
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Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
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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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The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
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Youth must be the worst time in anybody’s life.
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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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Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
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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