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The past is what makes the present coherent, and the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
Present
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.
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The world's definitions are one thing and the life one actually lives is quite another. One cannot allow oneself, nor one's family, friends, or lovers - to say nothing of one's children - to live according to the world's definitions: one must find a way, perpetually, to be stronger and better than that.
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Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
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The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.
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Heavenly witnesses are a tricky lot, to be used by whoever is closest to Heaven at the time. And legend and theology, which are designed to sanctify our fears, crimes, and aspirations, also reveal them for what they are.
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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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It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.
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Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
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The American ideal is, after all, that everyone should be as much alike as possible.
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Writing is a political instrument.
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To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.
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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.
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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.
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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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The challenge is in the moment the time is always now.
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America sometimes resembles, at least from the point of view of a black man, an exceedingly monotonous minstrel show the same dances, same music, same jokes. One has done (or been) the show so long that one can do it in one’s own sleep.
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Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.
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Because I was raised in a Christian culture I never considered myself to be a totally free human being.
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An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger.
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A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees.
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