If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
JAMES BALDWINThe purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
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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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People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.
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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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The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make 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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Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
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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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Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
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It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
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We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them.
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If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person.
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Whoever debases others is debasing himself.
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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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For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.
JAMES BALDWIN