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.
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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The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
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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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The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.
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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.
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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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Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
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Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.
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Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
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People don’t have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love.
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People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
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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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People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
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Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.
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Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
JAMES BALDWIN