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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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" 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. "

James A. Baldwin

Still

Lead

Pay

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

" 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

Through

Changes

" 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. "

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

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

James A. Baldwin

American

Said

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

James A. Baldwin

Nobody

Dangerous

" 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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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