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One of the most terrible, most mysterious things about a life is that a warning can be heeded only in retrospect: too late.

Regret and Reflection, Life Lessons, Time and Consequence, Wisdom and Experience, Missed Opportunities

One of the most terrible most mysterious things about a

One of the most terrible most mysterious things about a

One of the most terrible most mysterious things about a

James Baldwin’s Quotes On Topics

More James Baldwin Quotes

“Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.”

Life vs Art, Creative Purpose, Value of Life, Artistic Significance, Human Experience, Existential Thought

“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.”

Social Exclusion, Human Fears, Freaks and Society, Identity, Humanity and Judgement

“I think people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?”

Personal Freedom, Life Purpose, Individual Choice, Self-Determination, Living Fully, Happiness

“Time is just common, it’s like water for a fish. Everybody’s in this water, nobody gets out of it, or if he does the same thing happens to him that happens to the fish, he dies. And you know what happens in this water, time? The big fish eat the little fish. That’s all. The big fish eat the little fish and the ocean doesn’t care.”

Time, Life, Nature, Survival, Inequality

“But, in the end, it is the threat of universal extinction hanging over all the world today that changes, totally and forever, the nature of reality and brings into devastating question the true meaning of man’s history. We human beings now have the power to exterminate ourselves; this seems to be the entire sum of our achievement.”

Extinction, Reality, History, Power, Humanity

“I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me.”

Courage, Self-Respect, Overcoming Fear, Inner Strength, Shame, Personal Growth

“And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time, and furthermore, to win.”

Love's Power, Overcoming Obstacles, Relationship Strength, Time and Space, Emotional Victory, Love's Endurance

“One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.”

Sudden change, Revolution, Social unrest, Political upheaval, Explosive conflict, Unpredictable outcomes

“It was not only colored people who praised John, since they could not, John felt, in any case really know; but white people also said it, in fact had said it first and said it still. It was when John was five years old and in the first grade that he was first noticed; and since he was noticed by an eye altogether alien and impersonal, he began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individual existence.”

Racial identity, Childhood, Social perception, Recognition, Self-awareness, Race relations

“All art is a kind of confession.”

Art as Confession, Personal Expression, Artistic Truth, Self-Revelation, Creative Process, Emotional Release

“The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.”

Opportunity, Change, Freedom, Life Choices, New Beginnings

“The questions which one asks oneself begin, at last, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others. One can only face in others what one can face in oneself. On this confrontation depends the measure of our wisdom and compassion. This energy is all that one finds in the rubble of vanished civilizations, and the only hope for ours.”

Wisdom, Compassion, Reflection, Civilization, Human Connection, Introspection

“They knew that no one heard, that bloodless people cannot be made to bleed. So they blew what everyone had heard before, they reassured everyone that nothing terrible was happening.”

Silence, Injustice, Resistance, Society, Oppression, Truth

“If your countrymen think that privacy is a crime, so much the worse for your country.”

Privacy, Crime, Society, Freedom, Critique

“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.”

History and Humanity, Collective Memory, Anonymous Contributions, Human Struggle, Social Movements

“I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

Patriotism, America, Critique, Freedom, Love, National Identity

“And then, again, I was undergoing with my father what the very young inevitability undergo with their elders: I was beginning to judge him. And the very harshness of this judgement, which broke my heart, revealed, though I could not have said it then, how much I had loved him, how that love, along with my innocence, was dying.”

Father-Son Relationship, Judgment, Loss of Innocence, Emotional Growth, Family Dynamics

“Incontestably, alas, most people are not, in action, worth very much; and yet, every human being is an unprecedented miracle. One tries to treat them as the miracles they are, while trying to protect oneself against the disasters they’ve become.”

Human potential, Human value, Personal growth, Self-protection, Miracles, Societal challenges

“They are just dirty, all of them, low and cheap and dirty.′ He stretched out his hand and pulled me down to the floor beside him. ‘All except you. Tous, sauf toi.’ He held my face between his hands and I supposed such tenderness has scarcely ever produced such terror as I then felt. ‘Ne me laisse pas tomber, je t’en prie,’ he said, and kissed me, with a strange insistent gentleness on the mouth.”

Tenderness, Fear, Intensity, Love, Passion, Contrast

“The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.”

Writer's Responsibility, Experience Excavation, Self-Reflection, Cultural Identity, Personal History, Human Connection