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Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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More quotes by 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.
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No man is a devil in his own mind.
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But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.
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The trick is to love somebody.... If you love one person, you see everybody else differently.
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This is the charged, the dangerous moment, when everything must be re-examined, must be made new, when nothing at all can be taken for granted.
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You're getting to be a big boy,' I said desperately, 'it's time you started thinking about your future.' 'I'm thinking about my future,' said Sonny, grimly. 'I think about it all the time.
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The challenge is in the moment the time is always now.
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Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievements must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person.
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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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Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.
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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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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.
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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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And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time, and furthermore, to win.
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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.
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Writing is a political instrument.
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The determination to outwit one's situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
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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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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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A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, “I don’t look like that.” And Picasso replied, “You will.” And he was right.
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