I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also so much more than that. So are we all.
JAMES BALDWINPeople 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.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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When you’re writing you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.
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The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
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No man is a devil in his own mind.
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It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
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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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Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.
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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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Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
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There are people in the world for whom “coming along” is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.
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True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one’s life.
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Everybody’s journey is individual.
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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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You write in order to change the world, if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.
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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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There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.
JAMES BALDWIN






