Quotes by James Baldwin

James Baldwin

James Baldwin

American writer

Lived from: 1924 - 1987

Category: Writers (Contemporary) Country: FlagUnited States

Born: 2 august 1924 Died: 1 december 1987

Quotes 61 till 80 of 120.

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  • Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • One writes out of one thing only-one's own experience.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • People can cry much easier than they can change.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.
    Doom and glory of knowing who you are
    ― James Baldwin
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  • People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.
    ― James 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 Baldwin
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  • Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity.
    Nobody Knows My Name (1961)
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Rage cannot be hidden, it can only be dissembled. This dissembling deludes the thoughtless, and strengthens rage and adds, to rage, contempt.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Recognizing a problem doesn't always bring a solution, but until we recognize that problem, there can be no solution.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Society is held together by our need; we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • The American ideal, after all, is that everyone should be as much alike as possible.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no moral standards in the world at all.
    ― James Baldwin
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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.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • The future is... black.
    ― James Baldwin
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All James Baldwin famous quotes and sayings you will always find on greatest-quotations.com (page 4)

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