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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. "
James A. Baldwin
Know
Yourself
You
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" Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black. "
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" The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now. "
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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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" The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in. "
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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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" 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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" 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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" To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. "
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" I want to be an honest man and a good writer. "
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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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" 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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Who
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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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" No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it. "
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People
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" The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory. "
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" 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. "
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" Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours. "
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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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Law
Man
Much
" The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. "
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Lose
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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. "
James A. Baldwin
Conscious
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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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" I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative. "
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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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" 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
Will
Hate
Gone
" 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. "
James A. Baldwin
Nothing
World
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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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" 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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Daily
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" 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. "
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" People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. "
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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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