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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.

-James A. Baldwin

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There Is No Reason

James A. Baldwin

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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.

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A Writer Has To Take All The Risks Of Putting Down What He Sees.

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Man Cannot Live By Profit Alone.

Freedom Lurked Around Us And I Understood, At Last, That He Could Help Us Be Free If We Would Listen, That He Would Never Be Free Until We Did.

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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.

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This Is The Charged, The Dangerous Moment, When Everything Must Be Re-examined, Must Be Made New, When Nothing At All Can Be Taken For Granted.

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

Any Real Change Implies The Breakup Of The World As One Has Always Known It, The Loss Of All That Gave One An Identity, The End Of Safety.

The Moral Authority In The Western World Is Gone. And It Is Gone Forever. It Is Gone, Not Because Of The Criminal Record--everybody's Record Is Criminal. It Is Gone Because You Cannot Do One Thing And Pretend You're Doing Another! None Of Us, Who Are Sitting Around In Some Of The True Limbo Out-of-space, Which We Call "now," Waiting To Be Saved, Civilized, Or Discovered, Have The Moral Authority To Say Anything.

It Is Said That The Camera Cannot Lie, But Rarely Do We Allow It To Do Anything Else, Since The Camera Sees What You Point It At: The Camera Sees What You Want It To See.

Color Is Not A Human Or A Personal Reality; It Is A Political Reality.

Those Kids Aren't Dumb. But The People Who Run These Schools Want To Make Sure They Don't Get Smart: They Are Really Teaching The Kids To Be Slaves.

You Cannot Fix What You Will Not Face.

Self Improvement

He Leaned Up A Little And Watched Her Face. Her Face Would Now Be, Forever, More Mysterious And Impenetrable Than The Face Of Any Stranger. Strangers' Faces Hold No Secrets Because The Imagination Does Not Invest Them With Any. But The Face Of A Lover Is An Unknown Precisely Because It Is Invested With So Much Of Oneself. It Is A Mystery, Containing, Like All Mysteries, The Possibility Of Torment.

People Who Cling To Their Illusions Find It Difficult, If Not Impossible, To Learn Anything Worth Learning: A People Under The Necessity Of Creating Themselves Must Examine Everything, And Soak Up Learning The Way The Roots Of A Tree Soak Up Water.

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

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.

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

Tell Me, He Said, "what Is This Thing About Time? Why Is It Better To Be Late Than Early? People Are Always Saying, We Must Wait, We Must Wait. What Are They Waiting For?" "well […] I Guess People Wait In Order To Make Sure Of What They Feel." "and When You Have Waited—-has It Made You Sure?

All Racists Are Irresponsible.

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

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.

Christianity Has Operated With An Unmitigated Arrogance And Cruelty - Necessarily, Since A Religion Ordinarily Imposes On Those Who Have Discovered The True Faith The Spiritual Duty Of Liberating The Infidels.

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.

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.

Whoever Debases Others Is Debasing Himself.

African American

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.

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.

In My Case, I Think My Exile Saved My Life, For It Inexorably Confirmed Something Which Americans Appear To Have Great Difficulty Accepting. Which Is, Simply, This: A Man Is Not A Man Until He Is Able And Willing To Accept His Own Vision Of The World, No Matter How Radically This Vision Departs From Others.

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.

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

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.

You're Getting To Be A Big Boy,' I Said Desperately, 'it's Time You Started Thinking About Your Future.' 'i'm Thinking About My Future,' Said Sonny, Grimly. 'i Think About It All The Time.

If One Really Wishes To Know How Justice Is Administered In A Country, One Does Not Question The Policemen, The Lawyers, The Judges, Or The Protected Members Of The Middle Class. One Goes To The Unprotected - Those, Precisely, Who Need The Law's Protection Most! - And Listens To Their Testimony.

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.

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

The Challenge Is In The Moment; The Time Is Always Now.

Live In The Moment

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.

The Moment We Break Faith With One Another, The Sea Engulfs Us And The Light Goes Out.

All Art Is A Kind Of Confession.

To Be A Negro In This Country And To Be Relatively Conscious Is To Be In A Rage Almost All The Time.

African American

James Joyce Is Right About History Being A Nightmare-- But It May Be That Nightmare From Which No One Can Awaken. People Are Trapped In History And History In Trapped In Them.

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.

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.

Whoever Is Born In New York Is Ill-equipped To Deal With Any Other City: All Other Cities Seem, At Best, A Mistake, And, At Worst, A Fraud. No Other City Is So Spitefully Incoherent.

Secrets Hidden At The Heart Of Midnight Are Simply Waiting To Be Dragged To The Light, As, On Some Unlucky High Noon, They Always Are. But Secrets Shrouded In The Glare Of Candor Are Bound To Defeat Even The Most Determined And Agile Inspector For The Light Is Always Changing And Proves That The Eye Cannot Be Trusted.

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

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

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.

If You Really Want To Know Something About Solitude, Become Famous.

There Is A Fearful Splendor In Absolute Desolation.

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!

A Writer Has To Take All The Risks Of Putting Down What He Sees. No One Can Tell Him About That. No One Can Control That Reality. It Reminds Me Of Something Pablo Picasso Was Supposed To Have Said To Gertrude Stein While He Was Painting Her Portrait. Gertrude Said, “i Don’t Look Like That.” And Picasso Replied, “you Will.” And He Was Right.

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

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.

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.

I Think That The Inability To Love Is The Central Problem, Because That Inability Masks A Certain Terror, And That Terror Is The Terror Of Being Touched. And If You Can't Be Touched, You Can't Be Changed. And If You Can't Be Changed, You Can't Be Alive.

Inability To Love

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

It Is Dangerous To Be An American Negro Male. America Has Never Wanted Its Negroes To Be Men, And Does Not, Generally, Treat Them As Men. It Treats Them As Mascots, Pets, Or Things.

To Ask Questions Of The Universe, And Then Learn To Live With Those Questions, Is The Way He Achieves His Own Identity.

American History Is Longer, Larger, More Various, More Beautiful, And More Terrible Than Anything Anyone Has Ever Said About It.

American History

An Identity Is Questioned Only When It Is Menaced, As When The Mighty Begin To Fall, Or When The Wretched Begin To Rise, Or When The Stranger Enters The Gates, Never, Thereafter, To Be A Stranger.

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

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

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

Employment Is My Right My Destiny.

All Of Africa Will Be Free Before We Can Get A Lousy Cup Of Coffee.

Fires Can't Be Made With Dead Embers, Nor Can Enthusiasm Be Stirred By Spiritless Men. Enthusiasm In Our Daily Work Lightens Effort And Turns Even Labor Into Pleasant Tasks.

Writing Is A Political Instrument.

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.

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

People Who Believe That They Are Strong-willed And The Masters Of Their Destiny Can Only Continue To Believe This By Becoming Specialists In Self-deception.

To Be Sensual, I Think, Is To Respect And Rejoice In The Force Of Life, Of Life Itself, And To Be Present In All That One Does, From The Effort Of Loving To The Breaking Of Bread.

Children Have Never Been Very Good At Listening To Their Elders, But They Have Never Failed To Imitate Them.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Artistic Image Is Not Intended To Represent The Thing Itself, But, Rather, The Reality Of The Force The Thing Contains.

All I Know About Music Is That Not Many People Ever Really Hear It.

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.

White People Will Have Quite Enough To Do In Learning How To Accept And Love Themselves And Each Other, And When They Have Achieved This - Which Will Not Be Tomorrow And May Very Well Be Never - The Negro Problem Will No Longer Exist, For It Will No Longer Be Needed.

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.

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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.

Confusion Is A Luxury Which Only The Very, Very Young Can Possibly Afford And You Are Not That Young Anymore

Artists Are Here To Disturb The Peace.

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

The Hope Of The World Lies In What One Demands, Not Of Others, But Of Oneself.

There Are Too Many Things We Do Not Wish To Know About Ourselves. People Are Not, For Example, Terribly Anxious To Be Equal (equal, After All, To What And To Whom?) But They Love The Idea Of Being Superior.

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.

Nobody Is More Dangerous Than He Who Imagines Himself Pure In Heart; For His Purity, By Definition, Is Unassailable.

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

Neither Love Nor Terror Makes One Blind: Indifference Makes One Blind.

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

If I Could Make You Stay, I Would,’ He Shouted. ‘if I Had To Beat You, Chain You, Starve You—if I Could Make You Stay, I Would.’ He Turned Back Into The Room; The Wind Blew His Hair. He Shook His Finger At Me, Grotesquely Playful. ‘one Day, Perhaps, You Will Wish I Had.

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.

The Question Of Sexual Dominance Can Exist Only In The Nightmare Of That Soul Which Has Armed Itself, Totally, Against The Possibility Of The Changing Motion Of Conquest And Surrender, Which Is Love.

Unless A Writer Is Extremely Old When He Dies, In Which Case He Has Probably Become A Neglected Institution, His Death Must Always Seem Untimely.

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.

The Responsibility Of A Writer Is To Excavate The Experience Of The People Who Produced Him.

Whoever Is Born In New York Is Ill-equipped To Deal With Any Other City: All Other Cities Seem, At Best, A Mistake, And, At Worst, A Fraud. No Other City Is So Spitefully Incoherent. Whereas Other Cities Flaunt There History - Their Presumed Glory - In Vividly Placed Monuments, Squares, Parks, Plaques, And Boulevards, Such History As New York Has Been Unable Entirely To Obliterate Is To Be Found, Mainly, In The Backwaters Of Wall Street, In The Goat Tracks Of Old And West Broadway, In And Around Washington Square, And, For The Relentless Searcher, In Grimly Inaccessible Regions Of The Bronx.

Whatever White People Do Not Know About Negroes Reveals, Precisely And Inexorably, What They Do Not Know About Themselves.

I Conceive Of God, In Fact, As A Means Of Liberation And Not A Means To Control Others.

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

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.

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.

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