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The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.

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 most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
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An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.
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A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.
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It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own: in the face of one's victim, one sees oneself.
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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.
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One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.
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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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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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You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.
James A. Baldwin
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You don't need numbers you need passion, and this is proven by the history of the world!
James A. Baldwin
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It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
James A. Baldwin
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Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours.
James A. Baldwin
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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.
James A. Baldwin
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The impossible is the least that one can demand.
James A. Baldwin
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We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.
James A. Baldwin
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I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.
James A. Baldwin
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I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.
James A. Baldwin
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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.
James A. Baldwin
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It was as though we were a picture, trapped in time: this had been happening for hundreds of years, people sitting in a room, waiting for dinner, and listening to the blues.
James A. Baldwin