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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.
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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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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.
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Employment is my right my destiny.
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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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Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
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After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart! And we can only repossess them in our minds.
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The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.
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Great art can only be created out of love.
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There was no room in God's army for the coward heart, no crown awaiting him who put mother or father, sister or brother, sweetheart or friend above God's will. Let the church cry amen to this!
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One can only face in others what one can face in oneself.
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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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Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
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Most people... find a disorientating mismatch between the long-term nature of their liabilities and the increasingly short-term nature of their assets.
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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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The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can. And if one despairs-- as who has not?-- of human love, God's love alone is left.
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All racists are irresponsible.
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I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.
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I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
James A. Baldwin
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Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel.
James A. Baldwin