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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.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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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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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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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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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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I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change, who can teach-or people like myself, if I may say so, who are not afraid to eat a lobster alone as they take on their shoulders the monumental weight of thirty years
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A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.
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It is impossible to pretend that you are not heir to, and therefore, however inadequately or unwillingly, responsible to, and for, the time and place that give you life -- without becoming, at very best, a dangerously disoriented human being.
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Secrets hidden at the heart of midnight are simply waiting to be dragged to the light, as, on some unlucky high noon, they always are. But secrets shrouded in the glare of candor are bound to defeat even the most determined and agile inspector for the light is always changing and proves that the eye cannot be trusted.
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It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.
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Color is not a human or a personal reality it is a political reality.
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Experience is a private, very largely speechless affair.
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Youth must be the worst time in anybody's life. Everything's happening for the first time, which means that sorrow, then, lasts forever. Later, you can see that there was something very beautiful in it. That's because you ain't got to go through it no more.
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I started reading. I read everything I could get my hands on...By the time I was thirteen I had read myself out of Harlem. I had read every book in two libraries and had a card for the Forty-Second Street branch.
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Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.
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Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always seem untimely.
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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel.
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You've got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.
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If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected - those, precisely, who need the law's protection most! - and listens to their testimony.
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If you're afraid to die, you will not be able to live.
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