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If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they're real for you whether they're real or not.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.
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Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
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It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.
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A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.
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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
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There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
James A. Baldwin
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An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger.
James A. Baldwin
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The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
James A. Baldwin
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Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization of ourselves the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his.
James A. Baldwin
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A person does not lightly elect to oppose his society. One would much rather be at home among one's compatriots than be mocked and detested by them. And there is a level on which the mockery of people, even their hatred, is moving, because it is so blind: It is terrible to watch people cling to their captivity and insist on their own destruction.
James A. Baldwin
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I was in his hands, he called me by the thunder at my ear. I was in his hands: I was being changed all that I could do was cling to him. I did not realize, until I realized it, that I was also kissing him, that everything was breaking and changing and turning in me and moving toward him.
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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It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
James A. Baldwin
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The impossible is the least that one can demand.
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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The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.
James A. Baldwin
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It is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know-which is the price of your performance and survival-you do not exist. It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, you.
James A. Baldwin
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You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]
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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She was twenty and had come to realize that, though she had a voice, she wasn't a singer that to endure and embrace the life of a singer demands a whole lot more than a voice.
James A. Baldwin