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Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
Virtue
Imagines
Imagination
Purity
Imagine
Definition
Literature
Definitions
Evil
Danger
Heart
Pure
Nobody
Dangerous
Unassailable

More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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I don't know, now, when I first looked at Hella and found her stale, found her body uninteresting, her presence grating. It seemed to happen all at once—I suppose that only means that it had been happening for a long time.
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All racists are irresponsible.
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The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.
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The greatest significance of the present student generation is that it is through them that the point of view of the subjugated is finally and inexorably being expressed.
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Passion is not friendly. It is arrogant, superbly contemptuous of all that is not itself, and, as they very definition of passion implies the impulse to freedom, it has a might intimidiating power. It contains a challenge. It contains an unspeakable hope.
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We can make America what America must become.
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But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament it was a matter of punishment and grief.
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The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.
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The determination to outwit one's situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
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A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.
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After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So-Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.
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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.
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Art has to be a kind of confession. I don't mean a true confession in the sense of that dreary magazine. The effort it seems to me, is: if you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover them, too - the terms with which they are connected to other people.
James A. Baldwin
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Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
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A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees.
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Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
James A. Baldwin
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Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.
James A. Baldwin
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If you're afraid to die, you will not be able to live.
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Employment is my right my destiny.
James A. Baldwin