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For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
Unbearable
Freedom
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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All of us know, whether or not we are able to admit it, that mirrors can only lie, that death by drowning is all that awaits one there. It is for this reason that love is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
James A. Baldwin
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The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.
James A. Baldwin
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The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.
James A. Baldwin
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It is hard for anyone under twenty to realise that death has already assigned them a number, which is going to come up one day.
James A. Baldwin
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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.
James A. Baldwin
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Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
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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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.
James A. Baldwin
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The world's definitions are one thing and the life one actually lives is quite another. One cannot allow oneself, nor one's family, friends, or lovers - to say nothing of one's children - to live according to the world's definitions: one must find a way, perpetually, to be stronger and better than that.
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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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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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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Great art can only be created out of love.
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
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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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In order for this to happen, your entire frame of reference will have to change, and you will be forced to surrender many things that you now scarcely know you have.
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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Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.
James A. Baldwin
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I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.
James A. Baldwin