It is dangerous to be an American Negro male. America has never wanted its Negroes to be men, and does not, generally, treat them as men. It treats them as mascots, pets, or things.
James A. BaldwinRead
Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.
Interpretation
Talent alone is not enough for success; endurance and other factors are essential.
James A. Baldwin emphasizes that while talent is important, it is not the sole determinant of success. The quote suggests that qualities such as discipline, love, luck, and particularly endurance play a vital role in overcoming challenges and achieving one's goals, indicating that hard work and perseverance are more valuable than natural ability alone.
In practice
In a speech about overcoming obstacles, one might say, 'As James A. Baldwin once said, talent is insignificant without endurance.'
It is dangerous to be an American Negro male. America has never wanted its Negroes to be men, and does not, generally, treat them as men. It treats them as mascots, pets, or things.
The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.
Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.
Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.
The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.
The trick is to love somebody.... If you love one person, you see everybody else differently.
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We see men who have accumulated great fortunes, but we often recognize only their triumph, overlooking the temporary defeats which they had to surmount before arriving.
When you play this game twenty years, go to bat ten-thousand times, and get three-thousand hits, do you know what that means? You've gone zero for seven-thousand.
I would never allow anyone to give me money, no difference how badly I needed it. I wanted literally to earn my living.
The most important decision I've made in business? The choices of people I have around me. When I first started I brought everybody with me, my homies from the neighborhood, criminals. I just said, 'Come on everybody, we made it.' Then I had to realize we didn't make it. I made it.
If you do everything that everyone else does in business, you're going to lose. The only way to really be ahead, is to 'be different'.
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