James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name
"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."
6 Quotes
"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."
"هناك وهمٌ حول أمريكا، أسطورةٌ عنها نتشبث بها، لا تمت بصلةٍ إلى الحياة التي نعيشها. ولا أظن أن أحداً في هذا البلد، ممن فكروا ملياً في الأمر، أو ممن واجهوا هذا الوهم تقريباً – وقد واجهه معظمنا بطريقة أو بأخرى – لا أظن أن أحداً منهم يجهل أن هذا الصدام بين صورة المرء عن نفسه وما هو عليه في الواقع مؤلمٌ جداً على الدوام. وهناك أمران يمكنك فعلهما حيال ذلك: إما أن تواجه الصدام مباشرةً وتحاول أن تصبح ما أنت عليه حقاً، أو أن تتراجع وتحاول البقاء على ما كنت تظن أنك عليه، وهو وهمٌ ستفنى فيه حتماً."
James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name
"No one in the world -- in the entire world -- know more -- knows Americans better or, odd as this may sound, loves them more than the American Negro. This is because he has had to watch you, outwit you, deal with you, and bear you, and sometimes even bleed and die with you, ever since we got here, that is, since both of us, black and white, got here -- and this is a wedding. Whether I like it or not, or whether you like it or not, we are bound together forever. We are part of each other."
"لا أحد في هذا العالم — في العالم بأسره — يعرف الأمريكيين أكثر، أو، مهما بدا هذا غريباً، يحبهم أكثر من الزنجي الأمريكي. هذا لأنه اضطر إلى مراقبتكم، والتفوق عليكم ذكاءً، والتعامل معكم، وتحملكم، وأحياناً حتى النزف والموت معكم، منذ أن وطئت أقدامنا هذه الأرض، أي منذ أن وصلنا كلانا، الأسود والأبيض، إلى هنا — وهذا زواج. وسواء أعجبني ذلك أم لم يعجبني، أو أعجبك ذلك أم لم يعجبك، فإننا مقيدون معاً إلى الأبد. نحن جزء من بعضنا البعض."
James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name
"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."
James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name
"The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains."
James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name
"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."
James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name
"We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible."
James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name
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