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" Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it. "

James A. Baldwin

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

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

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" It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind. "

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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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" Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours. "

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" You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself. "

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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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" To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. "

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" Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings. "

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" The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love. "

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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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" I want to be an honest man and a good writer. "

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

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

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

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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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" Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks. "

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" Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law. "

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

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" American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it. "

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