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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.

James A. Baldwin

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More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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All racists are irresponsible.
James A. Baldwin
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Because I was raised in a Christian culture I never considered myself to be a totally free human being.
James A. Baldwin
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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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White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this - which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never - the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.
James A. Baldwin
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Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
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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But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.
James A. Baldwin
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The impossible is the least that one can demand.
James A. Baldwin
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Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.
James A. Baldwin
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If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected - those, precisely, who need the law's protection most! - and listens to their testimony.
James A. Baldwin
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Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always seem untimely.
James A. Baldwin
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If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.
James A. Baldwin
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When human rights are abused on a grand scale, the broth of purity boils and feeds the rebellion of a new order.
James A. Baldwin
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Tell me, he said, What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for? Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel. And when you have waited—-has it made you sure?
James A. Baldwin
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To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
James A. Baldwin
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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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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.
James A. Baldwin
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Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always be seen as untimely. This is because a real writer is always shifting and changing and searching. The world has many labels for him, of which the most treacherous is the label of Success.
James A. Baldwin
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The trick is to love somebody.... If you love one person, you see everybody else differently.
James A. Baldwin
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James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them.
James A. Baldwin