First time Quote by James Baldwin

““All for the first time, in the days when acts had no consequences and nothing was irrecoverable, and love was simple and even pain had the dignity of enduring forever: it was unimaginable that time could do anything to diminish it.””

James Baldwin

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“In any case, white people, who had robbed black people of their liberty and who profited by this theft every hour that they lived,…

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“The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live, and have lived here, are so ugly…

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“All cultures have, furthermore, an economic, social, and political base, and no culture can continue to live if its political destiny is not in…

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“I remembered that life in that room seemed to be occuring beneath the sea, time flowed past indiffrently above us, hours and days had…

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“No. It would help if I were able to feel guilty.But the end of innocence is also the end of guilt”

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“Perhaps now, though, he had hit bottom. One thing about the bottom, he told himself, you can't fall any further. He tried to take…

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“What kind of friendship have you had? Or for that matter...what kind of love affairs?”

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“For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.”

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“Every society is really governed by hidden laws, by unspoken but profound assumptions on the part of the people, and ours is no exception.”

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“In those days my mother was given to the exasperating and mysterious habit of having babies.”

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“He was suggesting that all Negroes were held in a state of supreme tension between the difficult, dangerous relationship in which they stood to…

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“In the beginning—and neither can this be overstated—a Negro just cannot believe that white people are treating him as they do; he does not…

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Explore all 312 James Baldwin quotes

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