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" I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. "

James A. Baldwin

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" To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. "

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

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

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

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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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" I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all. "

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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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" The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions. "

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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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" Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock. "

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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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" The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others. "

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" People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead. "

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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. "

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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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" The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. "

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

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

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" Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black. "

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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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" 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 love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. "

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