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ca29477
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But she saw nothing in my eyes--she stared at me as though I had made a long journey on a white charger all the way to her prison house.
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simile
knight-in-shining-armor
miscommunication
romantic-relationship
giovanni-s-room
james-baldwin
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James Baldwin |
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a979c40
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It was his hatred and his intelligence that he cherished, the one feeding the other.
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intelligence
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James Baldwin |
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0c31de9
|
White people in this country 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.
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James Baldwin |
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b013285
|
He had been bruised, so to speak, so badly that the eyes of strangers lacerated him like salt.
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metaphor
james-baldwin
wounded
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James Baldwin |
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85a966b
|
One of these days," he said. "Everything bad will happen--one of these days."
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giovanni-s-room
portent
james-baldwin
pessimistic
bad
ominous
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James Baldwin |
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92ad9d6
|
He was waiting, I think, for me to cross that space and take him in my arms again--waiting, as one waits at a deathbed for the miracle one dare not disbelieve, which will not happen.
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simile
starcrossed-lovers
james-baldwin
waiting
sad
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James Baldwin |
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1c49a87
|
while the excluded begin to realize, having endured everything, that they can endure everything.
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James Baldwin |
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baf7382
|
while the excluded begin to realize, having endured everything, that they can endure everything. They do not know the precise shape of the future, but they know that the future belongs to them. They realize this--paradoxically--by the failure of the moral energy of their oppressors and begin, almost instinctively, to forge a new morality, to create the principles on which a new world will be built.
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James Baldwin |
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ad52276
|
On each piece of paper I found addresses, telephone numbers, memos of various rendezvous made and kept--or perhaps not kept--people met and remembered, or perhaps not remembered, hopes probably not fulfilled: certainly not fulfilled, or I would not have been standing on that street corner.
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unfulfilled
james-baldwin
melancholy
regret
sad
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James Baldwin |
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b8ea8f9
|
Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say.
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hatred
hate
love
love-to-hate
james-baldwin
terrible
sad
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James Baldwin |
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ca63ceb
|
Then John knew that a curse was renewed from moment to moment, from father to son. Time was indifferent, like snow and ice; but the heart, crazed wanderer in the driving waste, carried the curse forever.
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James Baldwin |
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79f63ae
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I'm going to pray God," said John--and his voice shook, whether with joy or grief he could not say--"to keep me, and make me strong ... to stand ... to stand against the enemy ... and against everything and everybody ... that wants to cut down my soul."
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James Baldwin |
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244f324
|
I've begun this letter five times and torn it up five times.
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opening-lines
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James Baldwin |
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0d93706
|
People always seem to band together in accordance to a principle that has nothing to do with love, a principle that releases them from personal responsibility.
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James Baldwin |
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e90f84d
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Isn't love more important than colour?
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James Baldwin |
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e3438e5
|
One must be careful not to take refuge in any delusion.
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self-awareness
perspicacity
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James Baldwin |
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566d233
|
Shalott?
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James Baldwin |
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9b20c29
|
What it comes to is that if we, who can scarcely be considered a white nation, persist in thinking of ourselves as one, we condemn ourselves, with the truly white nations, to sterility and decay, whereas if we could accept ourselves as we are, we might bring new life to the Western achievements, and transform them.
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James Baldwin |
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383b6b5
|
I had discovered, through ugly experience, what they were like when they held the power and what they were like when you held the power.
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James Baldwin |
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2bda7a7
|
It is a fact that every American Negro bears a name that originally belonged to the white man whose chattel he was. I am called Baldwin because I was either sold by my African tribe or kidnapped out of it into the hands of a white Christian named Baldwin, who forced me to kneel at the foot of the cross. I am, then, both visibly and legally the descendant of slaves in a white, Protestant country, and this is what it means to be an American N..
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James Baldwin |
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d7129b4
|
And the passion with which we loved the Lord was a measure of how deeply we feared and distrusted and, in the end, hated almost all strangers, always, and avoided and despised ourselves.
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James Baldwin |
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a831d68
|
The spreading of the Gospel, regardless of the motives or the integrity or the heroism of some of the missionaries, was an absolutely indispensable justification for the planting of the flag.
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James Baldwin |
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814f6d3
|
we are living in an age of revolution, whether we will or no, and that America is the only Western nation with both the power and, as I hope to suggest, the experience that may help to make these revolutions real and minimize the human damage.
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James Baldwin |
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982b8d2
|
White people were, and are, astounded by the holocaust in Germany. They did not know that they could act that way. But I very much doubt whether black people were astounded--at least, in the same way.
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James Baldwin |
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db5f183
|
America could have used in other ways the energy that both groups have expended in this conflict. America, of all the Western nations, has been best placed to prove the uselessness and the obsolescence of the concept of color.
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James Baldwin |
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69ca84d
|
We human beings now have the power to exterminate ourselves; this seems to be the entire sum of our achievement. We have taken this journey and arrived at this place in God's name. This, then, is the best that God (the white God) can do. If that is so, then it is time to replace Him--replace Him with what?
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James Baldwin |
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ac47909
|
What the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself. You become a collaborator, an accomplice to your own murderers, because you believe the same things they do.
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James Baldwin |
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656abf0
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It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be. One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself--that is to say, risking oneself. If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of ..
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James Baldwin |
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5f6929f
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civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.
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James Baldwin |
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9d241fa
|
Something very sinister happens to the people of a country when they begin to distrust their own reactions as deeply as they do here, and become as joyless as they have become. It is this individual uncertainty on the part of white American men and women, this inability to renew themselves at the fountain of their own lives, that makes the discussion, let alone elucidation, of any conundrum--that is, any reality--so supremely difficult. The..
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James Baldwin |
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a83d3c6
|
To accept one's past--one's history--is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought. How can the American Negro's past be used? The unprecedented price demanded--and at this embattled hour of the world's history--is the transcendence of the realities of color, of nations, and of altars.
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James Baldwin |
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7b2cff3
|
The American Negro is a unique creation; he has no counterpart anywhere, and no predecessors. The Muslims react to this fact by referring to the Negro as "the so-called American Negro" and substituting for the names inherited from slavery the letter "X." It is a fact that every American Negro bears a name that originally belonged to the white man whose chattel he was. I am called Baldwin because I was either sold by my African tribe or kidn..
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James Baldwin |
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f9b0b69
|
every clanging ambulance bell, in every scar on the faces of the pimps and their whores, in every helpless, newborn baby being brought into this danger, in every knife and pistol fight on the Avenue, and in every disastrous bulletin: a cousin, mother of six, suddenly gone mad, the children parcelled out here and there; an indestructible aunt rewarded for years of hard labor by a slow, agonizing death in a terrible small room; someone's brig..
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James Baldwin |
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c537543
|
One would never defeat one's circumstances by working and saving one's pennies; one would never, by working, acquire that many pennies, and, besides, the social treatment accorded even the most successful Negroes proved that one needed, in order to be free, something more than a bank account.
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James Baldwin |
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28fc1b9
|
Words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply. --"The Crusade of Indignation," in Nation"
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James Baldwin |
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a0adb53
|
they ain't never met nobody they didn't lie to and steal from.
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racism
|
James Baldwin |
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d81ceb1
|
What white Americans do not face when they regard a Negro reality- the fact that life is tragic. Life is tragic simply because he earth turn and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps, the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves all he beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves..
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James Baldwin |
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c73fe0d
|
There is a blood-red thunder all around you, a blinding light flashes from time to time, voices roar and cease, roar and cease, you are in the grip of an unknowable agony, it is in your shoulders, your arms, your hands, your breath, an intolerable labor- and, no, it is not at all like approaching an orgasm, an orgasm implying relief, even, sometimes, however desperately, implying the hope of love. Love and death are connected, but not in th..
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James Baldwin |
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5dce21e
|
There is something fantastic in the spectacle I now present to myself of having run so far, so hard, across the ocean even, only to find myself brought up short once more before the bulldog in my own backyard -- the yard, in the meantime, having grown smaller and the bulldog bigger.
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James Baldwin |
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db3473e
|
Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself... I think now that if I had 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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James Baldwin |
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b920cb9
|
I suppose this is why I asked her to marry me: to give me something to be moored to. Perhaps this was why, in Spain, she decided that she wanted to marry me. But people can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.
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James Baldwin |
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afbd4f4
|
What it comes to is that if we, who can scarcely be considered a white nation, persist in thinking of ourselves as one, we condemn ourselves, with the truly white nations, to sterility and decay, whereas if we could accept ourselves as we are, we might bring new life to the Western achievements, and transform them. The price of this transformation is the unconditional freedom of the Negro; it is not too much to say that he, who has been so ..
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James Baldwin |
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ac9dc38
|
If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him. I
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James Baldwin |
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44defbf
|
My father's attitude was that this was but an inevitable phase of my growing up and he affected to take it lightly. But beneath his jocular, boys-together air, he was at a loss, he was frightened. Perhaps he had supposed that my growing up would bring us closer together-- whereas, now that he was trying to find out something about me, I was in full flight from him. I did not want him to know me. I did not want anyone to know me. And then, a..
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glbtq
parenting
|
James Baldwin |