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"The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land."
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"In the legal respect, after the execution of the supposed incendiaries, the other half of Moscow burned down."

"Up to 90% of all inventions of the world comes from the Protestant world."

"And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history-money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery-the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."

"If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation."

"In the parlor was a huge camera on wheels like the ones used in public parks, and the backdrop of a marine twilight, painted with homemade paints, and the walls papered with pictures of children at memorable moments: the first Communion, the bunny costume, the happy birthday. Year after year, during contemplative pauses on afternoons of chess, Dr. Urbino had seen the gradual covering over of the walls, and he had often thought with a shudder of sorrow that in the gallery of casual portraits lay the germ of the future of the city, governed and corrupted by those unknown children, where note even the ashes of his glory would remain."

"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history."

"Our aadivasi sisters and brothers have played a paramount role in the freedom struggle. For hundreds of years, people across villages of the country kept alive the flame of sacrifices for attaining independence. They left no stone unturned in helping India attain freedom."
Explore more quotes by James Baldwin

"The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black."

"If I could make you stay, I would,' he shouted. 'If I had to beat you, chain you, starve you-if I could make you stay, I would.' He turned back into the room; the wind blew his hair. He shook his finger at me, grotesquely playful. 'One day, perhaps, you will wish I had."

"I told myself all sorts of lies, standing there at the bar, but I could not move. And this was partly because I knew that it did not really matter anymore; it did not even matter if I never spoke to Giovanni again; for they had become visible, as visible as the wafers on the shirt of the flaming princess, they stormed all over me, my awakening, my insistent possibilities."

"Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be."

"The world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare."

"He wanted to go home and lock his door and sleep. He was tired of the troubles of real people. He wanted to get back to the people he was inventing, whose troubles he could bear."

"I can't be a pessimist because I'm alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter."

"Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long possessed that he is set free - he has set himself free - for higher dreams, for greater privileges."

"Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being."

"We had our arms round each other. It was like holding in my hand some rare, exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find."
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