"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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More quotes from: James A. Baldwin

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• "Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black. "
• "Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in ..."
• "Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. ..."
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• "He may be a very nice man. But I haven't got the time to figure ..."
• "I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, ..."
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• "I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this ..."
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• "I want to be an honest man and a good writer. "
• "I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think ..."
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• "It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious ..."
• "It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that ..."
• "It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful ..."
• "It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the ..."
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• "Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love ..."
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• "People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. "
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• "Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are ..."
• "Rage cannot be hidden, it can only be dissembled. This dissembling deludes the thoughtless, and ..."
• "That's the kind of ad I like, facts, facts, facts. "
• "The American ideal, after all, is that everyone should be as much alike as possible. "
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• "The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. "
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