American - Novelist | August 2, 1924 - December 1, 1987
But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.
James Baldwin
RelationshipPowerMoralityWithout
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.
BeautyLiveSadBeautifulUglyHere
People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.
PeopleBecomeMoreLeadPayStill
Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.
WorldImpossiblePersonNeverThan
The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.
PowerPeopleBlackWhiteWantNeed
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.
FaceMysteryUnknownBecauseLike
The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
ResponsibilityExperiencePeopleHim
We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.
ExperienceThoughtFindingDeedsOur
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.
FreeEqualFaithfulDrivenBecoming
The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.
PeopleBlackThinkWhiteImportant
Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
TruthControlLanguageLegendRoot
The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did - which was to hide.
FailureThinkEndHideYoungLiving
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