"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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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 ..."
• "It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the ..."

• "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 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 ..."