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Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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The trick is to love somebody.... If you love one person, you see everybody else differently.
James A. Baldwin
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There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment the time is always now.
James A. Baldwin
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A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.
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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Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.
James A. Baldwin
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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.
James A. Baldwin
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Not only was I not born to be a slave I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.
James A. Baldwin
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One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.
James A. Baldwin
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Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated – in the main, abominably – because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.
James A. Baldwin
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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.
James A. Baldwin
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I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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.
James A. Baldwin
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The determination to outwit one's situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
James A. Baldwin
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Each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other - male in female, female in male, white in black, and black in white. We are part of each other. Many of my countrymen appear to find this fact exceedingly inconvenient and even unfair, and so, very often, do I. But none of us can do anything about it.
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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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.
James A. Baldwin
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People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
James A. Baldwin
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Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity
James A. Baldwin
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Employment is my right my destiny.
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