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"There is an illusion about America, a myth about America to which we are clinging which has nothing to do with the lives we lead and I don't believe that anybody in this country who has really thought about it or really almost anybody who has been brought up against it--and almost all of us have one way or another--this collision between one's image of oneself and what one actually is is always very painful and there are two things you can do about it, you can meet the collision head-on and try and become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you thought you were, which is a fantasy, in which you will certainly perish."
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Exlpore more Self-Reflection quotes
"I have enjoyed my company so fondly, I may not feel alone when I am lonely."
"If there is wrong [ill] on the inside, the outside will appear wrong. Therefore, you should inquire within 'why am I bothered, when others are not? So there must be wrong within me only."
"What I do is the truest mirror of who I am."
"If you have never seen a masterpiece, look in the mirror."
"Oh yes, I am frequently driven to an enraged frenzy by the blatantly crass actions of others. But to be painfully honest, that anger is much less driven by the reality of their actions and far more fueled by the realization that everything I am is everything that I hate in them."
"Your mind is your world. Your heart is your nature. Your soul is your universe. Your life is your creation."
"I grab the pillows off the bed and chuck them at the reflection in the mirror of the girl I no longer know. I watch as the girl in the mirror stares back at me, sobbing pathetically. The weakness in her tears infuriates me."
"If you say something and reject any criticism, then your words truly meant to advise yourself."
"We must question every inner-belief we possess without fear or attachment."
Explore more quotes by James Baldwin
"It does seem - well, difficult - to be at the mercy of some gross, unshaven stranger before you can begin to be yourself."
"Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being."
"And here I was, left with only myself to deal with. It was entirely up to me."
"When he was dead I realized that I had hardly ever spoken to him. When he had been dead a long time I began to wish I had. It seems to be typical of life in America, where opportunities, real and fancied, are thicker than anywhere else on the globe, that the second generation has no time to talk to the first."
"We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours."
"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive."
"The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers."
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