“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

— James Baldwin

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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James Baldwin 163

(1924-1987) writer from the United States 1924–1987

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“Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.”

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Athenäum (1798 - 1800)
Source: “Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #31

“When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter's mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.”

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Source: Peter and Wendy (1911), Ch. 17
Context: As you look at Wendy, you may see her hair becoming white, and her figure little again, for all this happened long ago. Jane is now a common grown-up, with a daughter called Margaret; and every spring cleaning time, except when he forgets, Peter comes for Margaret and takes her to the Neverland, where she tells him stories about himself, to which he listens eagerly. When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter's mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.

“If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents?”

Michael Connelly book The Concrete Blonde

Source: The Concrete Blonde

“The monster I kill every day is the monster of realism. The monster who attacks me every day is destruction. Out of the duel comes the transformation. I turn destruction into creation over and over again.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

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“Terrorists who oppress and murder innocent people should never sleep soundly, knowing that we will completely destroy them. These savage monsters will not escape their fate – and they will not escape the final judgement of God.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

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“I was wondering what made a decent English army officer turn into a desperate revolutionist overnight,” I smiled.
“It happens to many like that,” he said. “I have seen them. But you have to show them so much injustice first… Nobody wants to believe that the world is cruel—or that one’s own kind are cruel. Not to know cruelty is to remain innocent, eh? And we should all like to remain innocent. A revolutionist is a man who, perhaps, fails to keep his innocence but so desperately wants it back that he seeks to create a world where all shall be innocent in that way.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 3, Chapter 7 “Project NFB” (p. 135)
Oswald Bastable, The Warlord of the Air (1971)

“U. S. News: You criticize the Miranda ruling, which gives suspects the right to have a lawyer present before police questioning. Shouldn't people, who may be innocent, have such protection?
Meese: Suspects who are innocent of a crime should. But the thing is, you don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect.”

Edwin Meese III (1931) American presidential advisor

As quoted in "Justice under Reagan: Reagan seeks judges with 'traditional approach" (14 October 1985), U.S. News & World Report, p. 67
1980s

“Ignorance is a kind of insanity in the human animal. People who delight in torturing defenseless children or tiny creatures are in reality insane. The terrible thing is that people who are madmen in private may wear a totally bland and innocent expression in public.”

Akira Kurosawa book Something Like an Autobiography

Akira Kurosawa 'Something Like an Autobiography (1981)
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“None of us can close our eyes to the fact that we do face enemies who use their distorted version of Islam to justify slaughtering innocent people.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

“…innocence is innocent not because it rejects but because it accepts; is innocent not because it is impervious and invulnerable to everything, but because it is capable of accepting anything and still remaining innocent; innocent because it foreknows all and therefore doesn't have to fear or be afraid.”

William Faulkner book The Town

Gavin Stevens in Ch. 15
The Town (1957)

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

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