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88ca494
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Perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.
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truth-telling
people
lives
fool
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James Baldwin |
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b04587a
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If I could make you stay, I would,' he shouted. 'If I had to beat you, chain you, starve you--if I could make you stay, I would.' He turned back into the room; the wind blew his hair. He shook his finger at me, grotesquely playful. 'One day, perhaps, you will wish I had.
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love
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James Baldwin |
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c12a45b
|
I was guilty and irritated and full of love and pain. I wanted to kick him and I wanted to take him in my arms.
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James Baldwin |
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e4106f9
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There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.
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James Baldwin |
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7e27eca
|
In overlooking, denying, evading this complexity--which is nothing more than the disquieting complexity of ourselves--we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger, darkness, can we find at once ourselves and the power that will free us from ourselves. It is this power of revelation that is the business of the novelist, this journey toward a more vast reality which must take precedence over..
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James Baldwin |
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336feaf
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Whose little boy are you?
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racism
youth
religion
god
harlem
james-baldwin
renaissance
institution
epiphany
coming-of-age
black
church
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James Baldwin |
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0d4fe2e
|
People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in order to console me for the wretchedness of blacks. But an itemized account of the American failure does not console me and it should not console anyone else. That hundreds of thousands of white people are living, in effect, no better than the "niggers" is not a fact to be regarded with complacency. The social and moral bankruptcy suggested by this fact is of the ..
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socioeconomic-failure
american-dream
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James Baldwin |
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c9dedd1
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I was in his hands, he called me by the thunder at my ear. I was in his hands: I was being changed; all that I could do was cling to him. I did not realize, until I realized it, that I was also kissing him, that everything was breaking and changing and turning in me and moving toward him.
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James Baldwin |
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2dad767
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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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James Baldwin |
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2622650
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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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education
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James Baldwin |
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e399787
|
In order for this to happen, your entire frame of reference will have to change, and you will be forced to surrender many things that you now scarcely know you have.
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James Baldwin |
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5d5961d
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There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that must accept . The terrible thing, old buddy, is that must accept And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they ca..
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racism
white-people
african-americans
superiority
race-relations
inferiority
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James Baldwin |
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9fc391c
|
If dirty words frighten you...I really don't 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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3ba5e26
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One writes out of one thing only--one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.
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James Baldwin |
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863c292
|
I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do ..
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musician
relationship
music
life
everything
instrument
ivory-tower
piano
wires
wood
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James Baldwin |
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e4690a4
|
Love was a country he knew nothing about.
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James Baldwin |
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0555fb4
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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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religion
love
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James Baldwin |
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6724e49
|
And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.
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James Baldwin |
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0c1b1a8
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Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both.
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James Baldwin |
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c42f683
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I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass.
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James Baldwin |
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21312b8
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Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.
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James Baldwin |
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3890c5a
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It's a miracle to realize that somebody loves you.
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James Baldwin |
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0495452
|
You took the best, so why not take the rest?
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James Baldwin |
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abb7a65
|
Every white person in this country-and I do not care what he or she says-knows one thing. They may not know, as they put, "what I want",but they know they would not like to be black here. If they know that, then they know everything they need to know, and whatever else they say is a lie."
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James Baldwin |
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95e5b1d
|
It must be remembered that in those great days I was considered to be an "integrationist" - this was never, quite, my own idea of myself - and Malcolm was considered to be a "racist in reverse." This formulation, in terms of power - and power is the arena in which racism is acted out - means absolutely nothing: it may even be described as a cowardly formulation. The powerless, by definition, can never be "racists," for they can never make t..
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racism
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James Baldwin |
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42098ca
|
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 and fear.
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James Baldwin |
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cb50b92
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She knows Daddy better than I do. I think it's because she's felt since we were children that our Daddy maybe loved me more than he loves her. This isn't true, and she knows that now--people love different people in different ways--but it must have seemed that way to her when we were little. I look as though I just can't make it, she looks like can't nothing stop her. If you look helpless, people react to you in one way and if you look stro..
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family-relationships
sisters
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James Baldwin |
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47b7ac1
|
There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that *they* must accept *you*. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love.
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James Baldwin |
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0940adf
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Heavenly witnesses are a tricky lot, to be used by whoever is closest to Heaven at the time. And legend and theology, which are designed to sanctify our fears, crimes, and aspirations, also reveal them for what they are.
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James Baldwin |
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0f217af
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It was a gesture of great despair and I knew that she was giving herself, not to me, but to that lover who would never come.
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James Baldwin |
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f1f7957
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One of the most terrible, most mysterious things about a life is that a warning can be heeded only in retrospect: too late.
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James Baldwin |
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742ac6e
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In my experience - and this is a very awkward way to put it, since I don't really know what the word means - the strangest people in one's life are the people one has known and loved, still know and will always love. Here, both I and the vocabulary are both in trouble, for does not imply . A stranger is a stranger is a stranger, simply, and you watch the stranger to anticipate his next move. But the people who elicit from you a depth o..
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people
love
strangers
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James Baldwin |
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c35ada6
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What white people have to do is try and find out in their own hearts why it is necessary to have a 'nigger' in the first place, because I'm not a nigger. I'm a man. But if you think I'm a nigger, it means you need it.
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James Baldwin |
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c0a71a0
|
If we- and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others- do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world
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James Baldwin |
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d87dd6b
|
People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.
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James Baldwin |
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f85e3d6
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Yet I also suspected that what I was seeing was but a part of the truth and perhaps not even the most important part; beneath these faces, these clothes, accents, rudenesses, was power and sorrow, both unadmitted, unrealized, the power of inventors, the sorrow of the disconnected.
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James Baldwin |
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be56535
|
A 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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fear
evil
wickedness
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James Baldwin |
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5f9bad7
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And if the word means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.
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america
reality
love
us
integration
whites
usa
united-states
race-relations
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James Baldwin |
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11104f7
|
Being in trouble can have a funny effect on the mind. I don't know if I can explain this. You go through some days and you seem to be hearing people and you seem to be talking to them and you seem to be doing your work, or, at least, your work gets done; but you haven't seen or heard a soul and if someone asked you what you have done that day you'd have to think awhile before you could answer. But at the same time, and even on the self-same..
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James Baldwin |
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589c1e7
|
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 on..
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James Baldwin |
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7e5482b
|
Only a man can see in the face of a woman the girl she was. It is a secret which can be revealed only to a particular man, and, then, only at his insistence. But men have no secrets, except from women, and never grow up in the way women do. It is very much harder, and it takes much longer, for a man to grow up, and he could never do it at all without women. This is a mystery which can terrify and immobilize a woman, and it is always the key..
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men
women
imagination
love
maturity
capitalism
|
James Baldwin |
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619683a
|
I don't know, now, when I first looked at Hella and found her stale, found her body uninteresting, her presence grating. It seemed to happen all at once--I suppose that only means that it had been happening for a long time.
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lost-love
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James Baldwin |
|
f6a890a
|
There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be "accepted" by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don't wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet. 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 achi..
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racism
america
compassion
politics
love
white-people
african-americans
race-relations
race
|
James Baldwin |
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c5f9d89
|
You don't know what's happening on the other side of the wall, because you don't want to know.
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James Baldwin |