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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.

James A. Baldwin

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James A. Baldwin
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin

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A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.
James A. Baldwin
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Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word love here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.
James A. Baldwin
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The world's definitions are one thing and the life one actually lives is quite another. One cannot allow oneself, nor one's family, friends, or lovers - to say nothing of one's children - to live according to the world's definitions: one must find a way, perpetually, to be stronger and better than that.
James A. Baldwin
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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
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The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
James A. Baldwin
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In order to have a conversation with someone you must reveal yourself.
James A. Baldwin
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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
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You took the best, so why not take the rest?
James A. Baldwin
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Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated – in the main, abominably – because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.
James A. Baldwin
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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
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I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life.
James A. Baldwin
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Art has to be a kind of confession. I don't mean a true confession in the sense of that dreary magazine. The effort it seems to me, is: if you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover them, too - the terms with which they are connected to other people.
James A. Baldwin
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Writing is a political instrument.
James A. Baldwin
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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.
James A. Baldwin
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I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.
James A. Baldwin
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People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.
James A. Baldwin
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White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this - which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never - the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.
James A. Baldwin
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Because I was raised in a Christian culture I never considered myself to be a totally free human being.
James A. Baldwin
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The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.
James A. Baldwin
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We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it.
James A. Baldwin