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" Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent. "

James A. Baldwin

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" The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. "

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" When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking. "

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" No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it. "

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" The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. "

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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. "

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" Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? "

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" The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all. "

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" The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did - which was to hide. "

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" When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living. "

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" To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread. "

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" If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons. "

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" It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. "

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" There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now. "

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" Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch. "

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" Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up. "

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" Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable. "

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" The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now. "

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" Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. "

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" Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned. "

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" There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it. "

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" There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention. "

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" The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever. "

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" Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. "

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" It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive. "

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" Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality. "

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" People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. "

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" People can cry much easier than they can change. "

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" I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative. "

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" Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. "

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