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Portrait of James A. Baldwin

James A. Baldwin

(1886–1964) Athletics Competitor United States

187 quotes in 896 categories

James A. Baldwin says that refusing to see another’s humanity also shrinks your own, and that many people never truly hear music. He observes that the American ideal pushes everyone to be alike, linking ideas and masculinity, and that the world can never be larger than the person living in it.

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James A. Baldwin was an athletics competitor from the United States, best known for Go Tell It on the Mountain.

Quick Facts About James A. Baldwin

Born: May 26, 1886
Died: August 2, 1964
Nationality: United States
Profession: Athletics Competitor
Notable works: Go Tell It on the Mountain

About James A. Baldwin

James A. Baldwin was an American football player, track athlete, coach of football, basketball and baseball, and a college athletics administrator. He grew up in Somerville, Massachusetts, and attended Dartmouth College, where he competed in football, baseball and track before graduating in 1908.

Quotes by James A. Baldwin

Hatred destroys the person who hates.

James A. Baldwin

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We can make America what America must become.

James A. Baldwin

America

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Man cannot live by profit alone.

James A. Baldwin

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Experience is a private, very largely speechless affair.

James A. Baldwin

Affair

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If you're afraid to die, you will not be able to live.

James A. Baldwin

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You write in order to change the world.

James A. Baldwin

Change

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Great art can only be created out of love.

James A. Baldwin

Art

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Employment is my right my destiny.

James A. Baldwin

Destiny

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Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.

James A. Baldwin

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A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees.

James A. Baldwin

Funny

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Not only was I not born to be a slave; I was not born to hope to become the equal of the…

James A. Baldwin

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The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

James A. Baldwin

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The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.

James A. Baldwin

Ideas

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A man's balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.

James A. Baldwin

Balance

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I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we…

James A. Baldwin

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At four o'clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.

James A. Baldwin

Clock

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To be with God is really to be involved in some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control,…

James A. Baldwin

Desire

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In the invincible and indescribable squalor of Harlem ... I was tormented. I felt caged, like an animal. I wanted to escape.…

James A. Baldwin

Animal

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Love is like the lightning, and your maturity is signaled by the extent to which you can accept the dangers and the…

James A. Baldwin

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Most people... find a disorientating mismatch between the long-term nature of their liabilities and the increasingly short-term nature of their assets.

James A. Baldwin

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We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; and yet it…

James A. Baldwin

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The wretched of the earth do not decide to become extinct, they resolve, on the contrary, to multiply: life is their weapon…

James A. Baldwin

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At bottom, to be colored means that one has been caught in some utterly unbelievable cosmic joke, a joke so hideous and…

James A. Baldwin

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Sentimentality , the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel.

James A. Baldwin

Dishonesty

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It is impossible to pretend that you are not heir to, and therefore, however inadequately or unwillingly, responsible to, and for, the…

James A. Baldwin

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Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will…

James A. Baldwin

Army

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European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself…

James A. Baldwin

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Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise. If we do not falter in…

James A. Baldwin

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To be born in a free society and not to be born free is to be born into a lie. To be…

James A. Baldwin

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Women manage, quite brilliantly, on the whole, and to stunning and unforeseeable effect, to survive and surmount being defined by others. They…

James A. Baldwin

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The American ideal of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal of masculinity. This idea has created cowboys and Indians,…

James A. Baldwin

Bad guy

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Each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other-male in female, female in male, white in black, and black in white. We…

James A. Baldwin

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I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village, waiting for the light to…

James A. Baldwin

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What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that…

James A. Baldwin

America

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Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one…

James A. Baldwin

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For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the…

James A. Baldwin

Acceptance

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Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one…

James A. Baldwin

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I can't be a pessimist, because I am alive.

James A. Baldwin

Alive

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Then I buckled up my shoes, and I started.

James A. Baldwin

Inspirational

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All art is a kind of confession.

James A. Baldwin

Art

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James A. Baldwin by topic

Inspirational (28) World (27) People (26) Love (24) Life (21) Justice (16) Writing (13) Men (13) Thinking (12) Social justice (12) Racism (12) Culture (12) Diversity (11) Time (10)