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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.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them.
James A. Baldwin
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A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees.
James A. Baldwin
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It is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know-which is the price of your performance and survival-you do not exist. It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, you.
James A. Baldwin
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The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.
James A. Baldwin
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You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.
James A. Baldwin
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People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen forget.
James A. Baldwin
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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.
James A. Baldwin
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All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
James A. Baldwin
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The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge. - James Baldwin, The Creative Process
James A. Baldwin
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All racists are irresponsible.
James A. Baldwin
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You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world... The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way... people look at reality, then you can change it.
James A. Baldwin
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There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.
James A. Baldwin
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Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real.
James A. Baldwin
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An American Negro, however deep his sympathies, or however bright his rage, ceases to be simply a black man when he faces a black man from Africa.
James A. Baldwin
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For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.
James A. Baldwin
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A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.
James A. Baldwin
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Experience is a private, very largely speechless affair.
James A. Baldwin
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Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.
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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A devotion to humanity is... too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.
James A. Baldwin