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

James A. Baldwin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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" The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment. "

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

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

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

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

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

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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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" 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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" 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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