The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
JAMES BALDWINThere 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.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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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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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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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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The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
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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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We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them.
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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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Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
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People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
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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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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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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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Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
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Our crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it.
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I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.
JAMES BALDWIN






