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It seems to be typical of life in America ... that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.
James A. Baldwin
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James A. Baldwin
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin
I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.
James A. Baldwin
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
James A. Baldwin
A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
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
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
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.
James A. Baldwin
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
The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
James A. Baldwin
You took the best, so why not take the rest?
James A. Baldwin
The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.
James A. Baldwin
There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.
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It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.
James A. Baldwin
There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.
James A. Baldwin
Color is not a human or a personal reality it is a political reality.
James A. Baldwin
He may be a very nice man. But I haven't got the time to figure that out. All I know is, he's got a uniform and a gun and I have to relate to him that way. That's the only way to relate to him because one of us may have to die.
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
The world tends to trap you in the role you play and it is always extremely hard to maintain a watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is.
James A. Baldwin
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.
James A. Baldwin
It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
James A. Baldwin
The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
James A. Baldwin