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The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
Literature
Questioning
Experience
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Oneself
Become
Keys
World
Questions
Begin
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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... every human being is an unprecedented miracle.
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The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.
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The trick is to love somebody.... If you love one person, you see everybody else differently.
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When the South has trouble with its Negroes - when the Negroes refuse to remain in their place - it blames outside agitators and Northern interference. When the nation has trouble with the Northern Negro, it blames the Kremlin.
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Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.
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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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You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.
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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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Artists are here to disturb the peace.
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In order to have a conversation with someone you must reveal yourself.
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Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always seem untimely.
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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.
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Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
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There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.
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Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always be seen as untimely. This is because a real writer is always shifting and changing and searching. The world has many labels for him, of which the most treacherous is the label of Success.
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I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.
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Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
James A. Baldwin
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I think white gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, in a society in which they were supposed to be safe. The anomaly of their sexuality puts them in danger, unexpectedly.
James A. Baldwin
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We are very cruelly trapped between what we would like to be and what we actually are. And we cannot possibly become what we would like to be until we are willing to ask ourselves just why the lives we lead on this continent are mainly so empty, so tame, and so ugly.
James A. Baldwin
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Most people... find a disorientating mismatch between the long-term nature of their liabilities and the increasingly short-term nature of their assets.
James A. Baldwin