The Wisdom Letter #177

5 quotes from James Baldwin (1924–1987)

✹ For today's Wisdom Letter, we have carefully curated five bite-sized quotes from the American writer and civil rights activist, James Baldwin (1924–1987).

Quote № 01:

“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”

— James Baldwin

Quote № 02:

“The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.”

— James Baldwin

Quote № 03:

“The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their "vital interests" are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the "sanctity" of human life, or the "conscience" of the civilized world.”

— James Baldwin

Quote № 04:

“One writes out of one thing only — one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.”

— James Baldwin

Quote № 05:

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive.”

— James Baldwin

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✺ Today’s Questions

Three philosophical questions to foster your curiosity:

Question № 01:

How does love enable us to confront the masks we wear, and why do we often cling to these masks even when they inhibit genuine connection?

Question № 02:

Does cultivating solitude as an artist risk creating a divide between the artist and society, or does it enable deeper engagement with the human experience?

Question № 03:

How does reading about the pain of others dissolve the illusion of isolation, and why does shared suffering form such a powerful bond among individuals?

✽ Thank you for reading today’s Wisdom Letter.

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