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James A. Baldwin

James A. Baldwin Quotes

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Famous James A. Baldwin Quotes

“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”

KnowsLoveLifeFearFriendshipRelationshipAnd LoveTrue LoveCoachesGenerosityMaskLove LifeInspirational LoveReal LoveOur LoveHippieGreat LoveFootballerWithout LoveBest LoveGreatest LoveSassyTime LoveThose We LoveRomance LovePerfect LoveFear Of LoveTruth LoveInfantileInspiring LoveTime And LoveI Love LifeTruth And LoveBest Ever LoveHappy RelationshipTrust LoveWise LoveInspirational RomanceLoving LoveInspirational True LoveLive Love LifeReality Of LoveLove And InspirationalEyes And LoveLove LineThank You LoveShort Inspirational LoveLive Without FearCool LoveLove Takes TimeAfraid To Fall In Love
Author:James A. Baldwin
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“We should certainly know by now that it is one thing to overthrow a dictator or repel an invader and quite another thing really to achieve a revolution. Time and time and time again, the people discover that they have merely betrayed themselves into the hands of yet another Pharaoh, who, since he was necessary to put the broken country together, will not let them go.”

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“The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen ... Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.”

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“Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it's true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”

KnowsMatterMomentsHappensArtistNextDarkBearsCitizensWalkingIllusionNo Matter WhatSafetyNobody KnowsWhistlingWalking In The Dark
Author:James A. Baldwin
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“All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours.”

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Author:James A. Baldwin
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“Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.”

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Author:James A. Baldwin
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“It will be hard James but you come from sturdy peasant stock men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity You come from a long line of great poets some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said "The very time I thought I was lost My dungeon shook and my chains fell off." You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free. God bless you James and Godspeed.”

KnowsMenYearsLongSaidCountryHardLostLinesPoetHundredBuiltRiversDignityTeethCelebrateChainsBlessOddsPeasantsGod BlessCottonRailroadsDungeonsGreat PoetSturdyLong LinesGod Bless You
Author:James A. Baldwin
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“I'm not interested in anybody's guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn't do it, and I didn't do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason... Anyone who is trying to be conscious must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we've used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are.”

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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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“Fonny and I just sat there... while the voices of the congregation rose and rose around us, without mercy... Teddy had the tambourine, and gave the cue to the piano player-I never got to know him: a long dark, evil-looking brother, with hands made for strangling; and with these hands he attacked the keyboard like he was beating the brains out of someone he remembered. No doubt the congregation had their memories, too, and they went to pieces. The church began to rock.”

KnowsLongMadeHandsEvilVoiceChurchMemoriesDarkBrainMusicDoubtPiecesPlayerRocksBrotherMercyRoseRememberedPianoSatNo DoubtRock MusicKeyboardsCongregationTeddyStrangling
Author:James A. Baldwin
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“Even the most incorrigible maverick has to be born somewhere. He may leave the group that produced him-he may be forced to-but nothing will efface his origins, the marks of which he carries with him everywhere. I think it is important to know this and even find it a matter for rejoicing, as the strongest people do, regardless of their station. On this acceptance, literally, the life of a writer depends.”

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Author:James A. Baldwin
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“Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person - ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”

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Author:James A. Baldwin
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