"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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More quotes from: James A. Baldwin

• "A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford ..."
• "American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone ..."
• "Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous ..."
• "Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing ..."
• "Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be ..."
• "Anyone who has struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. "
• "Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours. "
• "Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never ..."
• "Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black. "
• "Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is ..."
• "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. ..."
• "Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and ..."
• "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, ..."
• "I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because ..."
• "I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this ..."
• "I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this ..."
• "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 ..."
• "If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole ..."
• "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 ..."
• "Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, ..."

• "Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love ..."
• "Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really ..."
• "Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot ..."
• "Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you ..."
• "Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be ..."
• "Most people... find a disorientating mismatch between the long-term nature of their liabilities and the ..."
• "No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, ..."
• "No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his ..."
• "No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for ..."
• "Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, ..."
• "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it ..."
• "Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more ..."
• "One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from ..."
• "People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. "
• "People can cry much easier than they can change. "
• "People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves ..."
• "People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the ..."
• "Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice ..."
• "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. "
• "The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so ..."
• "The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there ..."

• "The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. "
• "The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory. "
• "The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is ..."
• "The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious ..."
• "The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept ..."
• "The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of ..."
• "The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which ..."
• "The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become ..."
• "The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as ..."
• "The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, ..."
• "The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all ..."
• "There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is ..."
• "There is a "sanctity" involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better ..."
• "There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. ..."
• "Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it. "
• "To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. "
• "To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be ..."
• "To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, ..."
• "Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in ..."
• "When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't ..."
• "When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop ..."
• "You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does ..."