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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 Baldwin

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JAMES BALDWIN The impossible is the least that one can demand.
JAMES BALDWIN The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which...
JAMES BALDWIN Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
JAMES BALDWIN how can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live...
JAMES BALDWIN Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immu...
JAMES BALDWIN Whoever debases others is debasing himself.
JAMES BALDWIN Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does ...
JAMES BALDWIN Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use t...
JAMES BALDWIN But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began sear...
JAMES BALDWIN People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in order to console me fo...
JAMES BALDWIN I must—to be honest—add that my ministry almost certainly helped me through my adolescence by gi...
JAMES BALDWIN The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or sh...
JAMES BALDWIN You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look a...
JAMES BALDWIN I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.
JAMES BALDWIN People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And the...
JAMES BALDWIN The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.
JAMES BALDWIN Perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.
JAMES BALDWIN Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The ...
JAMES BALDWIN You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you ...
JAMES BALDWIN The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
JAMES A. BALDWIN Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
JAMES A. BALDWIN