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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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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.
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Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
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You're getting to be a big boy,' I said desperately, 'it's time you started thinking about your future.' 'I'm thinking about my future,' said Sonny, grimly. 'I think about it all the time.
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People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become, and they pay for it, very simply, by the lives they lead.
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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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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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It is only because the world looks on his talent with such a frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important.
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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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The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.
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I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
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The determination to outwit one's situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
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The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
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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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After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart! And we can only repossess them in our minds.
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For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
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Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
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What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free.
James A. Baldwin
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If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
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We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have a sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be.
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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.
James A. Baldwin