The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
JAMES BALDWINI am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also so much more than that. So are we all.
More James Baldwin Quotes
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People can cry much easier than they can change.
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Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
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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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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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I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
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You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.
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Everybody’s journey is individual.
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The world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.
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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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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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You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.
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The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.
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If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
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People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
JAMES BALDWIN