History is not a procession of illustrious people. It’s about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.
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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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
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The 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.
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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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I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
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People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
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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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Artists are here to disturb the peace.
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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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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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American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
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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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If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person.
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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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We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them.
JAMES BALDWIN