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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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James A. Baldwin
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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... every human being is an unprecedented miracle.
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After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So-Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.
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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.
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Writing is a political instrument.
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Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
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You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.
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It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.
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Society is held together by our need we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden.
James A. Baldwin
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I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life.
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For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
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No man is a devil in his own mind.
James A. Baldwin
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We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it.
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If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
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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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Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings.
James A. Baldwin
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The trick is to love somebody.... If you love one person, you see everybody else differently.
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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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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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To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.
James A. Baldwin
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It is dangerous to be an American Negro male. America has never wanted its Negroes to be men, and does not, generally, treat them as men. It treats them as mascots, pets, or things.
James A. Baldwin