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A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
Someone
Thinking
Liberal
Thinks
Experience

More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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If all you want to do is make money, the very last thing you need is imagination.
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You've got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.
James A. Baldwin
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An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.
James A. Baldwin
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Writing is a political instrument.
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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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The American ideal is, after all, that everyone should be as much alike as possible.
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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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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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A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.
James A. Baldwin
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All racists are irresponsible.
James A. Baldwin
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This is the charged, the dangerous moment, when everything must be re-examined, must be made new, when nothing at all can be taken for granted.
James A. Baldwin
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Experience is a private, very largely speechless affair.
James A. Baldwin
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The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.
James A. Baldwin
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Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
James A. Baldwin
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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
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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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!
James A. Baldwin
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A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, “I don’t look like that.” And Picasso replied, “You will.” And he was right.
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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No man is a devil in his own mind.
James A. Baldwin