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A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
Taught
Education
Child
Despises
Anyone
Fooled
Powerful
Despise
Culture
Afford
Cannot
Diversity
Children
Teacher

More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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Secrets hidden at the heart of midnight are simply waiting to be dragged to the light, as, on some unlucky high noon, they always are. But secrets shrouded in the glare of candor are bound to defeat even the most determined and agile inspector for the light is always changing and proves that the eye cannot be trusted.
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You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.
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People can cry much easier than they can change.
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I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
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It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.
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People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
James A. Baldwin
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We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.
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Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
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When human rights are abused on a grand scale, the broth of purity boils and feeds the rebellion of a new order.
James A. Baldwin
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It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
James A. Baldwin
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We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have a sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be.
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He may be a very nice man. But I haven't got the time to figure that out. All I know is, he's got a uniform and a gun and I have to relate to him that way. That's the only way to relate to him because one of us may have to die.
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Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours.
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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 A. Baldwin
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One can only face in others what one can face in oneself.
James A. Baldwin
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Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands we have no right to assume otherwise. If we do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world.
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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.
James A. Baldwin
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For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
James A. Baldwin
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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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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.
James A. Baldwin