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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. "

James A. Baldwin

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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 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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" 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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" 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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" No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time. "

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

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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. "

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

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

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

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

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

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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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" 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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" 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. "

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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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" 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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" 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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" 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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" 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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