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We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have a sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.
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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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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I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
James A. Baldwin
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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.
James A. Baldwin
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If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.
James A. Baldwin
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Experience is a private, very largely speechless affair.
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
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The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
James A. Baldwin
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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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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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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.
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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Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel.
James A. Baldwin
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If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected - those, precisely, who need the law's protection most! - and listens to their testimony.
James A. Baldwin
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The impossible is the least that one can demand.
James A. Baldwin
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To defend oneself against a fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it fears must be faced.
James A. Baldwin
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When human rights are abused on a grand scale, the broth of purity boils and feeds the rebellion of a new order.
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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The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
James A. Baldwin