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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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" 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. "

James A. Baldwin

Love

Motion

Question

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

" 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. "

James A. Baldwin

Everything

Greed

" 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. "

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

James A. Baldwin

Nobody

Dangerous

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

James A. Baldwin

Frightening

Than

" The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory. "

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

James A. Baldwin

History

Time

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it. "

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

" The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in. "

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

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

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

" Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did. "

James A. Baldwin

Money

Nothing

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "