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5c21f4f
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Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise.
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James Baldwin |
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d540c9c
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That summer, in any case, all the fears with which I had grown up, and which were now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between the world and me, and drove me into the church.
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religion
race-and-racism-in-america
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James Baldwin |
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6bfd7c7
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If dirty words frighten you," said Giovanni, "I really do not know how you have managed to live so long. People are full of dirty words. The only time they do not use them, most people I mean, is when they are describing something dirty."
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James Baldwin |
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b4fb39d
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But I had been in the pulpit too long and I had seen too many monstrous things. I don't refer merely to the glaring fact that the minister eventually acquires houses and Cadillacs while the faithful continue to scrub floors and drop their dimes and quarters and dollars into the plate. I really mean that there was no love in the church. It was a mask for hatred and self-hatred and despair. The transfiguring power of the Holy Ghost ended when..
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James Baldwin |
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a4689a2
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The first time I saw Reverend Shuttlesworth, for example, he came strolling across the parking lot of the motel where I was staying, his hat perched precariously between the back of his skull and the nape of his neck, alone. It was late at night, and Shuttlesworth was a marked man in Birmingham. He came up into my room, and, while we talked, he kept walking back and forth to the window. I finally realized that he was keeping an eye on his c..
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James Baldwin |
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b8ff7e2
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I have known both of you all your lives, have carried your Daddy in my arms and on my shoulders, kissed and spanked him and watched him learn to walk. I don't know if you've known anybody from that far back; if you've loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man, you gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort. Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father's face, for beh..
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relationships
inspirational
parenting
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James Baldwin |
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e83d8ff
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The fact that their [the flower children's] uniforms and their jargons precisely represented the distances they had yet to cover before arriving at that maturity which makes love possible--or no longer possible--could not be considered their fault. They had been born into a society in which nothing was harder to achieve, in which perhaps nothing was more scorned and feared than the idea of the soul's maturity.
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no-name-in-the-street
post-imperialism
james-baldwin
imperialism
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James Baldwin |
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2a41e34
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In benighted, incompetent Africa, I had never encountered an orphan: the American streets resembled nothing so much as one vast, howling, unprecedented orphanage. It has been vivid to me for many years that what we call a race problem here is not a race problem at all: to keep calling it that is a way of avoiding the problem. The problem is rooted in the question of how one treats one's flesh and blood, especially one's children.
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no-name-in-the-street
post-imperialism
james-baldwin
imperialism
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James Baldwin |
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3e7d4b4
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People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare. Jacques
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James Baldwin |
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a772d39
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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. I
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James Baldwin |
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2dc5fcc
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How can one, however, dream of power in any other terms than in the symbols of power?
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James Baldwin |
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0f6fdef
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Ain't no such thing as a little fault or a big fault. Satan get his foot in the door, he ain't going to rest till he's in the room. You is in the Word or you ain't--ain't no halfway with God.
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spirituality
religion-christianity
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James Baldwin |
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bce7ef2
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You might even wait and do your cruising as a retired person clutching a fistful of platinum credit cards on a finely fitted boat filled with expensive gadgets needed to maintain your increased demands for comfort and security. But by that time you are somewhat lacking in the robust health and enthusiasm to fully engage in your long-postponed adventure. If I chose to sail as a young adventurer, poorly equipped in the material sense, I make ..
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James Baldwin |
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fe00be1
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As all sailors ultimately learn, it is easier to prepare a boat for sea than to clear the decks of your life for a voyage into unknown waters.
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James Baldwin |
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8236367
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He must be "good" not only in order to please his parents and not only to avoid being punished by them; behind their authority stands another, nameless and impersonal, infinitely harder to please, and bottomlessly cruel. And this filters into the child's consciousness through his parents' tone of voice as he is being exhorted, punished, or loved; in the sudden, uncontrollable note of fear heard in his mother's or his father's voice when he ..
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James Baldwin |
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88fe9b2
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The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair;
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James Baldwin |
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b53cf4c
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At night I studied the stars, memorizing the sky charts by penlight and then locating them in the real world planetarium reeling overhead. Where one man sees emptiness, another man sees his world bursting with fullness. No
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James Baldwin |
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f578703
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short poem by Wordsworth, entitled "My Heart leaps up": "My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky. So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old,"
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James Baldwin |
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880763a
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The sea, especially in its moments of fury, demands first your attention, then your endurance, and finally your patience and acceptance. If you lack this capacity, the sea will soon find you out and make it known to you that the shore is where you should make your home. Each
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James Baldwin |
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6e90fc3
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The beast which Giovanni had awakened in me would never go to sleep again; but one day I would not be with Giovanni any more. And would I then, like all the others, find myself turning and following all kinds of boys down God knows what dark avenues, into what dark places? With this fearful intimation there opened in me hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love and which was nourished by the same roots.
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James Baldwin |
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2a2e0c0
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Whoever debases others is debasing himself. That
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James Baldwin |
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6ee0740
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Ashore, the palms gently bowed before the wind, mixing the rustling of fronds with the murmur of surf in a captivating voice of mid-ocean solitude. With fully restored mind and body, I sailed away the next morning on a light wind, headed for a distant island of a million people.
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James Baldwin |
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8024fc9
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Solitude is the home of the strong; silence, their prayer. -
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James Baldwin |
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42537dd
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he was defeated long before he died because, at the bottom of his heart, he really believed what white people said about him.
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James Baldwin |
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3515de2
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all the fears with which I had grown up, and which were now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between the world and me...
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ta-nehisi-coates
race-and-racism-in-america
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James Baldwin |