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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.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
Stranger
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Menaced
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Thereafter
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Enters
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People can cry much easier than they can change.
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The impossible is the least that one can demand.
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People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
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Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.
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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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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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Great art can only be created out of love.
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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
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To defend oneself against a fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it fears must be faced.
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Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization of ourselves the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his.
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To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.
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Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
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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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There is something terribly radical about believing that one's own experience and images are important enough to speak about, much less to write about and to perform
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Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.
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For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.
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Yr crown has been bought and paid for. All you have to do is put it on yr head
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You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]
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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.
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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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