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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
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Questioned
Fall
Enters
Never
Wretched
Mighty
Gates
Stranger
Rise
Menaced
Identity
Thereafter

More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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One can only face in others what one can face in oneself.
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The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
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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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Remember, to hate, to be violent, is demeaning. It means you're afraid of the other side of the coin -- to love and be loved.
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There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment the time is always now.
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All of us know, whether or not we are able to admit it, that mirrors can only lie, that death by drowning is all that awaits one there. It is for this reason that love is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
James A. Baldwin
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We can make America what America must become.
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Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
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There are people in the world for whom coming along is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.
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What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free.
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There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.
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The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
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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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There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
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The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.
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We are very cruelly trapped between what we would like to be and what we actually are. And we cannot possibly become what we would like to be until we are willing to ask ourselves just why the lives we lead on this continent are mainly so empty, so tame, and so ugly.
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I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.
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We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.
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Tell me, he said, What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for? Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel. And when you have waited—-has it made you sure?
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It is hard for anyone under twenty to realise that death has already assigned them a number, which is going to come up one day.
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