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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.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.
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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 most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
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Life is more important than art that's what makes art important.
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The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through.
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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.
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Writing is a political instrument.
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The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.
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The trick is to love somebody.... If you love one person, you see everybody else differently.
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The miracle is that some have stepped out of the rags of the Republic's definition to assume the great burden and glory of their humanity and their responsibility for one another. It is an extraordinary achievement to be trapped in the dungeon of color and to dare to shake down its walls and to step out of it leaving the jailkeeper in the rubble.
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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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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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The world tends to trap you in the role you play and it is always extremely hard to maintain a watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is.
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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.
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Artists are here to disturb the peace.
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It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.
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He may be a very nice man. But I haven't got the time to figure that out. All I know is, he's got a uniform and a gun and I have to relate to him that way. That's the only way to relate to him because one of us may have to die.
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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.
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Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
James A. Baldwin