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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.
James A. Baldwin
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin
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
We can make America what America must become.
James A. Baldwin
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
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.
James A. Baldwin
A person does not lightly elect to oppose his society. One would much rather be at home among one's compatriots than be mocked and detested by them. And there is a level on which the mockery of people, even their hatred, is moving, because it is so blind: It is terrible to watch people cling to their captivity and insist on their own destruction.
James A. Baldwin
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
James A. Baldwin
Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
James A. Baldwin
Somebody, said Jacques, your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour - and in the oddest places! - for the lack of it.
James A. Baldwin
I was in his hands, he called me by the thunder at my ear. I was in his hands: I was being changed all that I could do was cling to him. I did not realize, until I realized it, that I was also kissing him, that everything was breaking and changing and turning in me and moving toward him.
James A. Baldwin
After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So-Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.
James A. Baldwin
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.
James A. Baldwin
I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.
James A. Baldwin
The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
James A. Baldwin
The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through.
James A. Baldwin
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
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
The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge. - James Baldwin, The Creative Process
James A. Baldwin
Not only was I not born to be a slave I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.
James A. Baldwin
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.
James A. Baldwin
To defend oneself against a fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it fears must be faced.
James A. Baldwin
