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Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands we have no right to assume otherwise. If we do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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More quotes by 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.
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I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.
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There was no room in God's army for the coward heart, no crown awaiting him who put mother or father, sister or brother, sweetheart or friend above God's will. Let the church cry amen to this!
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Experience is a private, very largely speechless affair.
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All racists are irresponsible.
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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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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.
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It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
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You took the best, so why not take the rest?
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Somebody, said Jacques, your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour - and in the oddest places! - for the lack of it.
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It is said that the camera cannot lie, but rarely do we allow it to do anything else, since the camera sees what you point it at: the camera sees what you want it to see.
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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.
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A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.
James A. Baldwin
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But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.
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A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
James A. Baldwin
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Sometimes you hear a person speak the truth and you know that they are speaking the truth. But you also know that they have not heard themselves, do not know what they have said: do not know that they have revealed much more than they have said. This may be why the truth remains, on the whole, so rare.
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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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Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
James A. Baldwin
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Employment is my right my destiny.
James A. Baldwin