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All Of Us Know, Whether Or Not We Are Able To Admit It, That Mirrors Can Only Lie, That Death By Drowning Is All That Awaits One There. It Is For This Reason That Love Is So Desperately Sought And So Cunningly Avoided. Love Takes Off The Masks That We Fear We Cannot Live Without And Know We Cannot Live Within.

-James A. Baldwin

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All Of Us Know,

James A. Baldwin

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All Of Us Know, Whether Or Not We Are Able To Admit It, That Mirrors Can Only Lie, That Death By Drowning Is All That Awaits One There. It Is For This Reason That Love Is So Desperately Sought And So Cunningly Avoided. Love Takes Off The Masks That We Fear We Cannot Live Without And Know We Cannot Live Within.

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It Is Astonishing The Lengths To Which A Person, Or A People, Will Go In Order To Avoid A Truthful Mirror.

Nothing Is More Desirable Than To Be Released From An Affliction, But Nothing Is More Frightening Than To Be Divested Of A Crutch.

Society Is Held Together By Our Need; We Bind It Together With Legend, Myth, Coercion, Fearing That Without It We Will Be Hurled Into That Void, Within Which, Like The Earth Before The Word Was Spoken, The Foundations Of Society Are Hidden.

Yet I Also Suspected That What I Was Seeing Was But A Part Of The Truth And Perhaps Not Even The Most Important Part; Beneath These Faces, These Clothes, Accents, Rudenesses, Was Power And Sorrow, Both Unadmitted, Unrealized, The Power Of Inventors, The Sorrow Of The Disconnected.

There Are So Many Ways Of Being Despicable It Quite Makes One’s Head Spin. But The Way To Be Really Despicable Is To Be Contemptuous Of Other People’s Pain.

This World Is White No Longer, And It Will Never Be White Again.

At Four O'clock In The Morning, When Everyone Is Drunk Enough, Then Extraordinary Things Can Happen.

The Great Force Of History Comes From The Fact That We Carry It Within Us, Are Unconsciously Controlled By It In Many Ways, And History Is Literally Present In All That We Do.

It Happened, As Many Things Do, Imperceptibly, In Many Ways At Once. I Date It - The Slow Crumbling Of My Faith, The Pulverization Of My Fortress - From The Time, About A Year After I Had Begun To Preach, When I Began To Read Again. I Justified This Desire By The Fact That I Was Still In School, And I Began, Fatally, With Dostoyevsky.

Perhaps Home Is Not A Place But Simply An Irrevocable Condition.

You Have To Decide Who You Are And Force The World To Deal With You, Not With Its Idea Of You.

The Relatively Conscious Whites And The Relatively Conscious Blacks, Who Must, Like Lovers, Insist On, Or Create, The Consciousness Of The Others In Order To End The Racial Nightmare And Acheive Our Country.

If One Cannot Risk Oneself, Then One Is Simply Incapable Of Giving. And, After All, One Can Give Freedom Only By Setting Someone Free.

Everyone Wishes To Be Loved, But In The Event, Nearly No One Can Bear It. Everyone Desires Love But Also Finds It Impossible To Believe That He Deserves It.

The Role Of The Artist Is Exactly The Same As The Role Of The Lover. If I Love You, I Have To Make You Conscious Of The Things You Don’t See.

True Rebels After All, Are As Rare As True Lovers,and In Both Cases, To Mistake A Fever For Passion Can Destroy One's Life

Passion Is Not Friendly. It Is Arrogant, Superbly Contemptuous Of All That Is Not Itself, And, As They Very Definition Of Passion Implies The Impulse To Freedom, It Has A Might Intimidiating Power. It Contains A Challenge. It Contains An Unspeakable Hope.

Love Takes Off The Masks That We Fear We Cannot Live Without And Know We Cannot Live Within. I Use The Word "love" Here Not Merely In The Personal Sense But As A State Of Being, Or A State Of Grace - Not In The Infantile American Sense Of Being Made Happy But In The Tough And Universal Sense Of Quest And Daring And Growth.

The Primary Distinction Of The Artist Is That He Must Actively Cultivate That State Which Most Men, Necessarily, Must Avoid: The State Of Being Alone.

The American Idea Of Racial Progress Is Measured By How Fast I Become White.

Words Like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" Are Not Common Concepts; On The Contrary, They Are Rare. People Are Not Born Knowing What These Are. It Takes Enormous And, Above All, Individual Effort To Arrive At The Respect For Other People That These Words Imply.

Individual Effort

One Day, To Everyone’s Astonishment, Someone Drops A Match In The Powder Keg And Everything Blows Up.

It Seems To Me That One Ought To Rejoice In The Fact Of Death-- Ought To Decide, Indeed, To Earn One's Death By Confronting With Passion The Conundrum Of Life. One Is Responsible To Life: It Is The Small Beacon In That Terrifying Darkness From Which We Come And To Which We Shall Return. One Must Negotiate This Passage As Nobly As Possible, For The Sake Of Those Who Are Coming After Us.

Everybody's Journey Is Individual. If You Fall In Love With A Boy, You Fall In Love With A Boy. The Fact That Many Americans Consider It A Disease Says More About Them Than It Does About Homosexuality.

Falling In Love

I'm Not Interested In Anybody's Guilt. Guilt Is A Luxury That We Can No Longer Afford. I Know You Didn't Do It, And I Didn't Do It Either, But I Am Responsible For It Because I Am A Man And A Citizen Of This Country And You Are Responsible For It, Too, For The Very Same Reason... Anyone Who Is Trying To Be Conscious Must Begin To Dismiss The Vocabulary Which We've Used So Long To Cover It Up, To Lie About The Way Things Are.

The Miracle Is That Some Have Stepped Out Of The Rags Of The Republic's Definition To Assume The Great Burden And Glory Of Their Humanity And Their Responsibility For One Another. It Is An Extraordinary Achievement To Be Trapped In The Dungeon Of Color And To Dare To Shake Down Its Walls And To Step Out Of It Leaving The Jailkeeper In The Rubble.

There Are Few Things More Dreadful Than Dealing With A Man Who Knows He Is Going Under, In His Own Eyes, And In The Eyes Of Others. Nothing Can Help That Man. What Is Left Of That Man Flees From What Is Left Of Human Attention.

Confronted With The Impossibility Of Remaining Faithful To One's Beliefs, And The Equal Impossibility Of Becoming Free Of Them, One Can Be Driven To The Most Inhuman Excesses.

I Don't Know, Now, When I First Looked At Hella And Found Her Stale, Found Her Body Uninteresting, Her Presence Grating. It Seemed To Happen All At Once—i Suppose That Only Means That It Had Been Happening For A Long Time.

But To Look Back From The Stony Plain Along The Road Which Led One To That Place Is Not At All The Same Thing As Walking On The Road; The Perspective To Say The Very Least, Changes Only With The Journey; Only When The Road Has, All Abruptly And Treacherously, And With An Absoluteness That Permits No Argument, Turned Or Dropped Or Risen Is One Able To See All That One Could Not Have Seen From Any Other Place.

There Was No Room In God's Army For The Coward Heart, No Crown Awaiting Him Who Put Mother Or Father, Sister Or Brother, Sweetheart Or Friend Above God's Will. Let The Church Cry Amen To This!

You Write In Order To Change The World, Knowing Perfectly Well That You Probably Can't, But Also Knowing That Literature Is Indispensable To The World... The World Changes According To The Way People See It, And If You Alter, Even By A Millimeter, The Way... People Look At Reality, Then You Can Change It.

Remember, To Hate, To Be Violent, Is Demeaning. It Means You're Afraid Of The Other Side Of The Coin -- To Love And Be Loved.

Everything Now, We Must Assume, Is In Our Hands; We Have No Right To Assume Otherwise. If We Do Not Falter In Our Duty Now, We May Be Able, Handful That We Are, To End The Racial Nightmare, And Achieve Our Country, And Change The History Of The World.

If I Am Not What You Say I Am, Then You Are Not Who You Think You Are.

It Is Perfectly Possible To Be Enamoured Of Paris While Remaining Totally Indifferent Or Even Hostile To The French.

If You're Treated A Certain Way You Become A Certain Kind Of Person. If Certain Things Are Described To You As Being Real They're Real For You Whether They're Real Or Not.

The Occurrence Of An Event Is Not The Same Thing As Knowing What It Is That One Has Lived Through. Most People Had Not Lived -- Nor Could It, For That Matter, Be Said That They Had Died-- Through Any Of Their Terrible Events. They Had Simply Been Stunned By The Hammer. They Passed Their Lives Thereafter In A Kind Of Limbo Of Denied And Unexamined Pain. The Great Question That Faced Him This Morning Was Whether Or Not Had Had Ever, Really, Been Present At His Life.

Terrible Events

I Prefer Sinners And Madmen, Who Can Learn, Who Can Change, Who Can Teach-or People Like Myself, If I May Say So, Who Are Not Afraid To Eat A Lobster Alone As They Take On Their Shoulders The Monumental Weight Of Thirty Years

It Is Hard For Anyone Under Twenty To Realise That Death Has Already Assigned Them A Number, Which Is Going To Come Up One Day.

There Is No Reason For You To Try To Become Like White People And There Is No Basis Whatever For Their Impertinent Assumption That *they* Must Accept *you*. The Really Terrible Thing, Old Buddy, Is That You Must Accept Them. And I Mean That Very Seriously. You Must Accept Them And Accept Them With Love.

Fonny And I Just Sat There... While The Voices Of The Congregation Rose And Rose Around Us, Without Mercy... Teddy Had The Tambourine, And Gave The Cue To The Piano Player-i Never Got To Know Him: A Long Dark, Evil-looking Brother, With Hands Made For Strangling; And With These Hands He Attacked The Keyboard Like He Was Beating The Brains Out Of Someone He Remembered. No Doubt The Congregation Had Their Memories, Too, And They Went To Pieces. The Church Began To Rock.

The Sea Rises, The Light Fails, Lovers Cling To Each Other And Children Cling To Us. The Moment We Cease To Hold Each Other, The Moment We Break Faith With One Another, The Sea Engulfs Us And The Light Goes Out.

People Are Trapped In History And History Is Trapped In Them.

Recognizing A Problem Doesn't Always Bring A Solution, But Until We Recognize That Problem, There Can Be No Solution.

Freaks Are Called Freaks And Are Treated As They Are Treated – In The Main, Abominably – Because They Are Human Beings Who Cause To Echo, Deep Within Us, Our Most Profound Terrors And Desires.

To Be With God Is Really To Be Involved In Some Enormous, Overwhelming Desire, And Joy, And Power Which You Cannot Control, Which Controls You.

Overwhelming Desire

No One Knows Very Much About The Life Of Another. This Ignorance Becomes Vivid, If You Love Another. Love Sets The Imagination On Fire, And, Also, Eventually, Chars The Imagination Into A Harder Element: Imagination Cannot Match Love, Cannot Plunge So Deep, Or Range So Wide.

After My Best Friend Jumped Off The Bridge, I Knew That I Was Next. So-paris. With Forty Dollars And A One-way Ticket.

It Is Rare Indeed That People Give. Most People Guard And Keep; They Suppose That It Is They Themselves And What They Identify With Themselves That They Are Guarding And Keeping, Whereas What They Are Actually Guarding And Keeping Is Their System Of Reality And What They Assume Themselves To Be.

Freedom Is Not Something That Anybody Can Be Given. Freedom Is Something People Take, And People Are As Free As They Want To Be

I Think Americans Are Terrified Of Feeling Anything. I Never Met A People More Infantile In My Life.

One Writes Out Of One Thing Only - One's Own Experience.

People Who Shut Their Eyes To Reality Simply Invite Their Own Destruction.

Precisely At The Point When You Begin To Develop A Conscience You Must Find Yourself At War With Your Society.

Being In The Pulpit, Was Like Being In The Theatre; I Was Behind The Scenes And Knew How The Illusion Worked.

Behind The Scenes

And Love Will Simply Have No Choice But To Go Into Battle With Space And Time, And Furthermore, To Win.

To Act Is To Be Committed, And To Be Committed Is To Be In Danger.

The Betrayal Of A Belief Is Not The Same Thing As Ceasing To Believe. If This Were Not So There Would Be No Moral Standards In The World At All.

Women Manage, Quite Brilliantly, On The Whole, And To Stunning And Unforeseeable Effect, To Survive And Surmount Being Defined By Others. They Dismiss The Definition, However Dangerous Or Wounding It May Be-- Or Even, Sometimes, Find A Way To Utilize It.

It Must Be Remembered That In Those Great Days I Was Considered To Be An "integrationist" - This Was Never, Quite, My Own Idea Of Myself - And Malcolm Was Considered To Be A "racist In Reverse." This Formulation, In Terms Of Power - And Power Is The Arena In Which Racism Is Acted Out - Means Absolutely Nothing: It May Even Be Described As A Cowardly Formulation. The Powerless, By Definition, Can Never Be "racists," For They Can Never Make The World Pay For What They Feel Or Fear Except By The Suicidal Endeavor Which Makes Them Fanatics Or Revolutionaries, Or Both.

The World's Definitions Are One Thing And The Life One Actually Lives Is Quite Another. One Cannot Allow Oneself, Nor One's Family, Friends, Or Lovers - To Say Nothing Of One's Children - To Live According To The World's Definitions: One Must Find A Way, Perpetually, To Be Stronger And Better Than That.

The World Is Before You, And You Need Not Take It Or Leave It As It Was When You Came In.

You Want To Write A Sentence As Clean As A Bone. That Is The Goal.

Not Only Was I Not Born To Be A Slave; I Was Not Born To Hope To Become The Equal Of The Slave Master.

But The Relationship Of Morality And Power Is A Very Subtle One. Because Ultimately Power Without Morality Is No Longer Power.

To Be Black And Conscious In America Is To Be In A Constant State Of Rage.

Each Of Us, Helplessly And Forever, Contains The Other - Male In Female, Female In Male, White In Black, And Black In White. We Are Part Of Each Other. Many Of My Countrymen Appear To Find This Fact Exceedingly Inconvenient And Even Unfair, And So, Very Often, Do I. But None Of Us Can Do Anything About It.

But, When The Chips Are Down, Its Better To Be Furious With Someone You Love, Or Frightened For Someone You Love, Than Be Put Through The Merciless Horror Of Being Ashamed Of Someone You Love.

Someone You Love

These Boys, Now, Were Living As We'd Been Living Then, They Were Growing Up With A Rush And Their Heads Bumped Abruptly Against The Low Ceiling Of Their Actual Possibilities. They Were Filled With Rage. All They Really Knew Were Two Darknesses, The Darkness Of Their Lives, Which Were Now Closing In On Them, And The Darkness Of The Movies, Which Had Blinded Them To That Other Darkness, And In Which They Now, Vindictively, Dreamed, At Once More Together Than They Were At Any Other Time, And More Alone.

He May Be A Very Nice Man. But I Haven't Got The Time To Figure That Out. All I Know Is, He's Got A Uniform And A Gun And I Have To Relate To Him That Way. That's The Only Way To Relate To Him Because One Of Us May Have To Die.

I Thought Of The People Before Me Who Had Looked Down At The River And Gone To Sleep Beneath It. I Wondered About Them. I Wondered How They Had Done It--it, The Physical Act. I Simply Wondered About The Dead Because Their Days Had Ended And I Did Not Know How I Would Get Through Mine.

What Passes For Identity In America Is A Series Of Myths About One's Heroic Ancestors. It's Astounding To Me, For Example, That So Many People Really Seem To Believe That The Country Was Founded By A Band Of Heroes Who Wanted To Be Free.

I Often Wonder What I'd Do If There Weren't Any Books In The World.

No One Can Possibly Know What Is About To Happen: It Is Happening, Each Time, For The First Time, For The Only Time.

Hatred, Which Could Destroy So Much, Never Failed To Destroy The Man Who Hated, And This Was An Immutable Law.

Not Everything That Is Faced Can Be Changed. But Nothing Can Be Changed Until It Is Faced.

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.

You Cannot Fix What You Will Not Face.

Self Improvement

There Is A 'sanctity' Involved With Bringing A Child Into This World: It Is Better Than Bombing One Out Of It.

All Over Harlem, Negro Boys And Girls Are Growing Into Stunted Maturity, Trying Desperately To Find A Place To Stand; And The Wonder Is Not That So Many Are Ruined But That So Many Survive.

It Is Only Because The World Looks On His Talent With Such A Frightening Indifference That The Artist Is Compelled To Make His Talent Important.

For, While The Tale Of How We Suffer, And How We Are Delighted, And How We May Triumph Is Never New, It Always Must Be Heard. There Isn't Any Other Tale To Tell, It's The Only Light We've Got In All This Darkness.

America Sometimes Resembles, At Least From The Point Of View Of A Black Man, An Exceedingly Monotonous Minstrel Show; The Same Dances, Same Music, Same Jokes. One Has Done (or Been) The Show So Long That One Can Do It In One’s Own Sleep.

It Is Certain, In Any Case, That Ignorance, Allied With Power, Is The Most Ferocious Enemy Justice Can Have.

We Are Responsible For The World In Which We Find Ourselves, If Only Because We Are The Only Sentient Force Which Can Change It.

Most People... Find A Disorientating Mismatch Between The Long-term Nature Of Their Liabilities And The Increasingly Short-term Nature Of Their Assets.

The Civilized Have Created The Wretched, Quite Coldly And Deliberately, And Do Not Intend To Change The Status Quo; Are Responsible For Their Slaughter And Enslavement; Rain Down Bombs On Defenseless Children Whenever And Wherever They Decide That Their "vital Interests" Are Menaced, And Think Nothing Of Torturing A Man To Death: These People Are Not To Be Taken Seriously When They Speak Of The "sanctity" Of Human Life, Or The "conscience" Of The Civilized World.

Sentimentality, The Ostentatious Parading Of Excessive And Spurious Emotion, Is The Mark Of Dishonesty, The Inability To Feel.

Man Cannot Live By Profit Alone.

To Defend Oneself Against A Fear Is Simply To Insure That One Will, One Day, Be Conquered By It; Fears Must Be Faced.

The American Ideal Is, After All, That Everyone Should Be As Much Alike As Possible.

There Are Too Many Things We Do Not Wish To Know About Ourselves.

A Liberal: Someone Who Thinks He Knows More About Your Experience Than You Do.

The Real Victim Of Bigotry Is The White Man Who Hides His Weakness Under His Myth Of Superiority.

A Ghetto Can Be Improved In One Way Only: Out Of Existence.

When Americans Look Out On The World, They See Nothing But Dark And Menacing Strangers Who Appear To Have No Sense Of Rhythm At All, Nor Any Respect Or Affection For White People; And White Americans Really Do Not Know What To Make Of All This, Except To Increase The Defense Budget.

We Cannot Discuss The State Of Our Minorities Until We First Have A Sense Of What We Are, Who We Are, What Our Goals Are, And What We Take Life To Be.

Unless A Writer Is Extremely Old When He Dies, In Which Case He Has Probably Become A Neglected Institution, His Death Must Always Be Seen As Untimely. This Is Because A Real Writer Is Always Shifting And Changing And Searching. The World Has Many Labels For Him, Of Which The Most Treacherous Is The Label Of Success.

The South Is Very Beautiful But Its Beauty Makes One Sad Because The Lives That People Live Here, And Have Lived Here, Are So Ugly.

I Can't Believe What You Say, Because I See What You Do.

I Will No Longer Take Anyone's Word For My Experience.

Youth Must Be The Worst Time In Anybody's Life. Everything's Happening For The First Time, Which Means That Sorrow, Then, Lasts Forever. Later, You Can See That There Was Something Very Beautiful In It. That's Because You Ain't Got To Go Through It No More.

Experience, Which Destroys Innocence, Also Leads One Back To It.

One Writes Out Of One Thing Only - One's Own Experience. Everything Depends On How Relentlessly One Forces From This Experience The Last Drop, Sweet Or Bitter, It Can Possibly Give. This Is The Only Real Concern Of The Artist, To Recreate Out Of The Disorder Of Life That Order Which Is Art.

It Took Many Years Of Vomiting Up All The Filth I’d Been Taught About Myself, And Half-believed, Before I Was Able To Walk On The Earth As Though I Had A Right To Be Here.

You Don't Need Numbers; You Need Passion, And This Is Proven By The History Of The World!

The Most Dangerous Creation Of Any Society Is The Man Who Has Nothing To Lose.

I've Always Believed That You Can Think Positive Just As Well As You Can Think Negative.

Motivational Sports

To Hold In The Mind Forever Two Ideas Which Seemed To Be In Opposition. The First . . . Acceptance Totally Without Rancor, Of Life As It Is, And Men As They Are [;] . . . The Second . . . That One Must Never, In One's Life, Accept . . . Injustices As Commonplace But Must Fight Them With All One's Strength.

Then I Buckled Up My Shoes, And I Started.

Love Takes Off Masks That We Fear We Cannot Live Without And Know We Cannot Live Within.

If You're Afraid To Die, You Will Not Be Able To Live.

Whatever You Describe To Another Person Is Also A Revelation Of Who You Are And Who You Think You Are. You Can Not Describe Anything Without Betraying Your Point Of View, Your Aspirations, Your Fears, Your Hopes. Everything.

The Making Of An American Begins At The Point Where He Himself Rejects All Other Ties, Any Other History, And Himself Adopts The Vesture Of His Adopted Land.

And I Was Yet Aware That This Was Only A Moment, That The World Waited Outside, As Hungry As A Tiger, And That Trouble Stretched Above Us, Longer Than The Sky.

Identity Would Seem To Be The Garment With Which One Covers The Nakedness Of The Self: In Which Case, It Is Best That The Garment Be Loose, A Little Like The Robes Of The Desert, Through Which One's Nakedness Can Always Be Felt, And, Sometimes, Discerned. This Trust In One's Nakedness Is All That Gives One The Power To Change One's Robes.

For These Are All Our Children, We Will All Profit By Or Pay For Whatthey Become.

Love Does Not Begin And End The Way We Seem To Think It Does. Love Is A Battle, Love Is A War; Love Is A Growing Up.

There Is Something Terribly Radical About Believing That One's Own Experience And Images Are Important Enough To Speak About, Much Less To Write About And To Perform

In The Invincible And Indescribable Squalor Of Harlem ... I Was Tormented. I Felt Caged, Like An Animal. I Wanted To Escape. I Felt If I Did Not Get Out I Would Slowly Strangle.

At Bottom, To Be Colored Means That One Has Been Caught In Some Utterly Unbelievable Cosmic Joke, A Joke So Hideous And In Such Bad Taste That It Defeats All Categories And Definitions.

For Nothing Is Fixed, Forever And Forever, It Is Not Fixed; The Earth Is Always Shifting, The Light Is Always Changing, The Sea Does Not Cease To Grind Down Rock. Generations Do Not Cease To Be Born, And We Are Responsible To Them Because We Are The Only Witnesses They Have. The Sea Rises, The Light Fails, Lovers Cling To Each Other And Children Cling To Us. The Moment We Cease To Hold Each Other, The Moment We Break Faith With One Another, The Sea Engulfs Us And The Light Goes Out.

All I Know About Music Is That Not Many People Ever Really Hear It. And Even Then, On The Rare Occasions When Something Opens Within, And The Music Enters, What We Mainly Hear, Or Hear Corroborated, Are Personal, Private, Vanishing Evocations. But The Man Who Creates The Music Is Hearing Something Else, Is Dealing With The Roar Rising From The Void And Imposing Order On It As It Hits The Air. What Is Evoked In Him, Then, Is Of Another Order, More Terrible Because It Has No Words, And Triumphant, Too, For That Same Reason. And His Triumph, When He Triumphs, Is Ours.

If We Do Not Now Dare Everything, The Fulfillment Of That Prophecy, Re-created From The Bible In Song By A Slave, Is Upon Us: God Gave Noah The Rainbow Sign. No More Water, Fire Next Time.

It Is Impossible To Pretend That You Are Not Heir To, And Therefore, However Inadequately Or Unwillingly, Responsible To, And For, The Time And Place That Give You Life -- Without Becoming, At Very Best, A Dangerously Disoriented Human Being.

A Child Cannot Be Taught By Anyone Who Despises Him, And A Child Cannot Afford To Be Fooled.

The Establishment Of Democracy On The American Continent Was Scarcely As Radical A Break With The Past As Was The Necessity, Which Americans Faced, Of Broadening This Concept To Include Black Men.

The Determination To Outwit One's Situation Means That One Has No Models, Only Object Lessons.

I Love America More Than Any Other Country In The World, And, Exactly For This Reason, I Insist On The Right To Criticize Her Perpetually.

The Power Of The White World Is Threatened Whenever A Black Man Refuses To Accept The White World's Definitions.

I Am Aware That No Man Is A Villain In His Own Eyes.

The Male Cannot Bear Very Much Humiliation; And He Really Cannot Bear It, It Obliterates Him.

One Cannot Deny The Humanity Of Another Without Diminishing One's Own.

I Was Guilty And Irritated And Full Of Love And Pain. I Wanted To Kick Him And I Wanted To Take Him In My Arms.

The Past Is What Makes The Present Coherent, And The Past Will Remain Horrible For Exactly As Long As We Refuse To Assess It Honestly.

Everything Depends On How Relentlessly One Forces From Experience The Last Drop, Sweet Or Bitter, It Can Possibly Give.

The Reason People Think It's Important To Be White Is That They Think It's Important Not To Be Black.

I Remember Standing On A Street Corner With The Black Painter Beauford Delaney Down In The Village, Waiting For The Light To Change, And He Pointed Down And Said, 'look.' I Looked And All I Saw Was Water. And He Said, 'look Again,' Which I Did, And I Saw Oil On The Water And The City Reflected In The Puddle. It Was A Great Revelation To Me. I Can't Explain It. He Taught Me How To See, And How To Trust What I Saw. Painters Have Often Taught Writers How To See. And Once You've Had That Experience, You See Differently.

If The Relationship Of Father To Son Could Really Be Reduced To Biology, The Whole Earth Would Blaze With The Glory Of Fathers And Sons.

A Real Writer Is Always Shifting And Changing And Searching.

You Think Your Pains And Heartbreaks Are Unprecedented In The History Of The World, But Then You Read. [and Then You Discover That Others Have Suffered Much More Than You And Your Problems Look Good In Comparison]

If The Word 'integration' Means Anything, This Is What It Means That We, With Love, Shall Force Our Brothers To See Themselves As They Are, To Cease Fleeing From Reality And Begin To Change It.

There Are Few Things Under Heaven More Unnerving Than The Silent, Accumulating Contempt And Hatred Of A People.

It Is A Great Shock At The Age Of Five Or Six To Find That In A World Of Gary Coopers You Are The Indian.

One Is Responsible To Life: It Is The Small Beacon In That Terrifying Darkness From Which We Come And To Which We Shall Return.

I Started Reading. I Read Everything I Could Get My Hands On...by The Time I Was Thirteen I Had Read Myself Out Of Harlem. I Had Read Every Book In Two Libraries And Had A Card For The Forty-second Street Branch.

When The South Has Trouble With Its Negroes - When The Negroes Refuse To Remain In Their "place" - It Blames "outside Agitators" And "northern Interference." When The Nation Has Trouble With The Northern Negro, It Blames The Kremlin.

When The Book Comes Out It May Hurt You - But In Order For Me To Do It, It Had To Hurt Me First. I Can Only Tell You About Yourself As Much As I Can Face About Myself.

I Really Do Believe In The New Jerusalem. I Really Do Believe That We Can All Become Better Than We Are. I Know We Can. But The Price Is Enormous And People Are Not Yet Willing To Pay It.

Please Try To Remember That What They Believe, As Well As What They Do And Cause You To Endure Does Not Testify To Your Inferiority But To Their Inhumanity

I Am Certainly Convinced That It Is One Of The Greatest Impulses Of Mankind To Arrive At Something Higher Than A Natural State.

The Only Thing That White People Have That Black People Need, Or Should Want, Is Power-and No One Holds Power Forever.

Black And White

People Can Cry Much Easier Than They Can Change, A Rule Of Psychology People Like Me Picked Up As Kids On The Street.

Well,’ I Said, ‘paris Is Old, Is Many Centuries. You Feel, In Paris, All The Time Gone By. That Isn’t What You Feel In New York — ’he Was Smiling. I Stopped. ‘what Do You Feel In New York?’ He Asked. ‘perhaps You Feel,’ I Told Him, ‘all The Time To Come. There’s Such Power There, Everything Is In Such Movement. You Can’t Help Wondering—i Can’t Help Wondering—what It Will All Be Like— Many Years From Now.

Artists Are Here To Disturb The Peace.

People Who Treat Other People As Less Than Human Must Not Be Surprised When The Bread They Have Cast On The Waters Comes Floating Back To Them, Poisoned.

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.

It Comes As A Great Shock…to Discover That The Flag To Which You Have Pledged Allegiance…has Not Pledged Allegiance To You. It Comes As A Great Shock To See Gary Cooper Killing Off The Indians, And Although You Are Rooting For Gary Cooper, That The Indians Are You.

Years Ago, When He Was Around Fourteen, He'd Been All Hipped On The Idea Of Going To India. He Read Books About People Sitting On Rocks, Naked, In All Kinds Of Weather, But Mostly Bad, Naturally, And Walking Barefoot Through Hot Coals And Arriving At Wisdom. I Used To Say That It Sounded To Me As Though They Were Getting Away From Wisdom As Fast As They Could. I Think He Sort Of Looked Down On Me For That.

Whoever Debases Others Is Debasing Himself.

African American

I Want To Be An Honest Man And A Good Writer.

History Is Not A Procession Of Illustrious People. It's About What Happens To A People. Millions Of Anonymous People Is What History Is About.

Perhaps, As We Say In America, I Wanted To Find Myself. This Is An Interesting Phrase, Not Current As Far As I Know In The Language Of Any Other People, Which Certainly Does Not Mean What It Says But Betrays A Nagging Suspicion That Something Has Been Misplaced. I Think Now That If I Had Any Intimation That The Self I Was Going To Find Would Turn Out To Be Only The Same Self From Which I Had Spent So Much Time In Flight, I Would Have Stayed At Home.

I Can't Be A Pessimist, Because I Am Alive.

I Began Plotting Novels At About The Time I Learned To Read. The Story Of My Childhood Is The Usual Bleak Fantasy, And We Can Dismiss It With The Restrained Observation That I Certainly Would Not Consider Living It Again.

We Have All Had The Experience Of Finding That Our Reactions And Perhaps Even Our Deeds Have Denied Beliefs We Thought Were Ours.

When You’re Writing, You’re Trying To Find Out Something Which You Don’t Know. The Whole Language Of Writing For Me Is Finding Out What You Don’t Want To Know, What You Don’t Want To Find Out. But Something Forces You To Anyway.

Heavenly Witnesses Are A Tricky Lot, To Be Used By Whoever Is Closest To Heaven At The Time. And Legend And Theology, Which Are Designed To Sanctify Our Fears, Crimes, And Aspirations, Also Reveal Them For What They Are.

Every Legend, Moreover, Contains Its Residuum Of Truth, And The Root Function Of Language Is To Control The Universe By Describing It.

But It Was Not The Room’s Disorder Which Was Frightening; It Was The Fact That When One Began Searching For The Key To This Disorder, One Realized That It Was Not To Be Found In Any Of The Usual Places. For This Was Not A Matter Of Habit Or Circumstance Or Temperament; It Was A Matter Of Punishment And Grief.

The Wretched Of The Earth Do Not Decide To Become Extinct, They Resolve, On The Contrary, To Multiply: Life Is Their Weapon Against Life, Life Is All That They Have.

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.

We All Commit Our Crimes. The Thing Is To Not Lie About Them -- To Try To Understand What You Have Done, Why You Have Done It. That Way, You Can Begin To Forgive Yourself. That's Very Important. If You Don't Forgive Yourself You'll Never Be Able To Forgive Anybody Else And You'll Go On Committing The Same Crimes Forever.

Art Has To Be A Kind Of Confession. I Don't Mean A True Confession In The Sense Of That Dreary Magazine. The Effort It Seems To Me, Is: If You Can Examine And Face Your Life, You Can Discover The Terms With Which You Are Connected To Other Lives, And They Can Discover Them, Too - The Terms With Which They Are Connected To Other People.

A Civilization Is Not Destroyed By Wicked People; It Is Not Necessary That People Be Wicked But Only That They Be Spineless.

Drive To The Heart Of Every Answer And Expose The Question The Answer Hides.

There Is A Fearful Splendor In Absolute Desolation.

There Exists Among The Intolerable Degraded, The Perverse And Powerful Desire To Force Into The Arena Of The Actual Those Fantastic Crimes Of Which They Have Been Accused, Achieving Their Vengeance And Their Own Destruction Through Making The Nightmare Real.

Rage Cannot Be Hidden, It Can Only Be Dissembled. This Dissembling Deludes The Thoughtless, And Strengthens Rage And Adds, To Rage, Contempt.

Nakedness Has No Color: This Can Come As News Only To Those Who Have Never Covered, Or Been Covered By, Another Naked Human Being.

Know From Whence You Came. If You Know Whence You Came, There Are Absolutely No Limitations To Where You Can Go.

All Racists Are Irresponsible.

What Passes For Identity In America Is A Series Of Myths About One's Heroic Ancestors. It's Astounding To Me, For Example, That So Many People Really Appear To Believe That The Country Was Founded By A Band Of Heroes Who Wanted To Be Free. That Happens Not To Be True. What Happened Was That Some People Left Europe Because They Couldn't Stay There Any Longer And Had To Go Somewhere Else To Make It. That's All. They Were Hungry, They Were Poor, They Were Convicts. Those Who Were Making It In England, For Example, Did Not Get On The Mayflower. That's How The Country Was Settled.

It Will Be Hard James But You Come From Sturdy Peasant Stock Men Who Picked Cotton And Dammed Rivers And Built Railroads And In The Teeth Of The Most Terrifying Odds Achieved An Unassailable And Monumental Dignity You Come From A Long Line Of Great Poets Some Of The Greatest Poets Since Homer. One Of Them Said "the Very Time I Thought I Was Lost My Dungeon Shook And My Chains Fell Off." You Know And I Know That The Country Is Celebrating One Hundred Years Of Freedom One Hundred Years Too Soon. We Cannot Be Free Until They Are Free. God Bless You James And Godspeed.

Most Of Us Are About As Eager To Change As We Were To Be Born, And Go Through Our Changes In A Similar State Of Shock.

European Society Has Always Been Divided Into Classes In A Way That American Society Never Has Been. A European Writer Considers Himself To Be Part Of An Old And Honorable Tradition--of Intellectual Activity, Of Letters--and His Choice Of A Vocation Does Not Cause Him Any Uneasy Wonder As To Whether Or Not It Will Cost Him All His Friends. But This Tradition Does Not Exist In America.

For Nothing Is More Unbearable, Once One Has It, Than Freedom.

The Victim Who Is Able To Articulate The Situation Of The Victim Has Ceased To Be A Victim: He Or She Has Become A Threat.

Life Is Tragic Simply Because The Earth Turns And The Sun Inexorably Rises And Sets, And One Day, For Each Of Us, The Sun Will Go Down For The Last, Last Time.

The Universe, Which Is Not Merely The Stars And The Moon And The Planets, Flowers, Grass And Trees, But Other People, Has Evolved No Terms For Your Existence, Has Made No Room For You, And If Love Will Not Swing Wide The Gates, No Other Power Will Or Can. And If One Despairs-- As Who Has Not?-- Of Human Love, God's Love Alone Is Left.

One Can Only Face In Others What One Can Face In Oneself.

The Place In Which I'll Fit Will Not Exist Until I Make It.

Love Is Like The Lightning, And Your Maturity Is Signaled By The Extent To Which You Can Accept The Dangers And The Power And The Beauty Of Love.

The Future Is Like Heaven-everyone Exalts It But No One Wants To Go There Now.

When One Begins To Live By Habit And By Quotation, One Has Begun To Stop Living.

Employment Is My Right My Destiny.

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.

The American Ideal Of Sexuality Appears To Be Rooted In The American Ideal Of Masculinity. This Idea Has Created Cowboys And Indians, Good Guys And Bad Guys, Punks And Studs, Tough Guys And Softies, Butch And Faggot, Black And White. It Is An Ideal So Paralytically Infantile That It Is Virtually Forbidden - As An Unpatriotic Act - That The American Boy Evolve Into The Complexity Of Manhood

Black And White

Love Him And Let Him Love You. Do You Think Anything Else Under Heaven Really Matters?

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Whittaker Chambers

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