James Baldwin Quotes
Collection of top 100 famous quotes about James Baldwin
James Baldwin Quotes & Sayings
Happy to read and share the best inspirational James Baldwin quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.
Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise.
— James Baldwin
The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then didwhich was to hide. — James Baldwin
Money, iit turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of otherthings if you did.
— James Baldwin
Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?
— James A. Baldwin
Anyway, I have long had a very definite tendency to tune out the moment I come anywhere near either a pulpit or a soapbox.
— James Baldwin
You don't need numbers; you need passion, and this is proven by the history of the world!
— James A. Baldwin
Love was a country he knew nothing about.
— James Baldwin
The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.
— James Baldwin
The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.
— James A. Baldwin
It does seem - well, difficult - to be at the mercy of some gross, unshaven stranger before you can begin to be yourself.
— James Baldwin
And have brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white.
— James Baldwin
Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
— James Baldwin
What kind of friendship have you had?Or for that matter ... what kind of love affairs? — James Baldwin
It seemed, then, that a lifetime would not be long enough for me to act with Joey the act of love.
— James Baldwin
We go down the hall again, thank heaven, to my drink.
— James Baldwin
Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.
— James Baldwin
An American Negro, however deep his sympathies, or however bright his rage, ceases to be simply a black man when he faces a black man from Africa.
— James A. Baldwin
At four o'clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.
— James A. Baldwin
I can't be a pessimist, because I am alive.
— James A. Baldwin
I am certainly convinced that it is one of the greatest impulses of mankind to arrive at something higher than a natural state.
— James A. Baldwin
A ghetto can be improved in one way only: out of existence.
— James A. Baldwin
In the first place, Descartes stands for the most explicit and uncompromising dualism between mind and matter.
— James Mark Baldwin
I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.
— James A. Baldwin
The purpose of education ... is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.
— James A. Baldwin
And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time, and furthermore, to win.
— James A. Baldwin
All of Africa will be free before we can get a lousy cup of coffee.
— James A. Baldwin
There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
— James A. Baldwin
To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.
— James A. Baldwin
We take our shape within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth.
— James Baldwin
Heredity provides for the modification of its own machinery.
— James Mark Baldwin
All racists are irresponsible.
— James A. Baldwin
At length, she lay beside him like a burden laid down at evening which must be picked up once more in the morning.
— James Baldwin
After an interval of two and a half centuries, the tradition of mystic illumination renewed itself in Italy and Germany.
— James Mark Baldwin
Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
— James A. Baldwin
The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.
— James A. Baldwin
People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
— James Baldwin
Employment is my right my destiny.
— James A. Baldwin
The rebirth of the soul is perpetual; only rebirth every hour could stay the hand of Satan.
— James Baldwin
It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
— James Baldwin
Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.
— James A. Baldwin
The American ideal is, after all, that everyone should be as much alike as possible.
— James Baldwin
Then I buckled up my shoes, and I started.
— James A. Baldwin
Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
— James Baldwin
Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
— James Baldwin
Lord, that Hollywood train, forever coming round the bend!
— James Baldwin
If all you want to do is make money, the very last thing you need is imagination.
— James A. Baldwin
I thought she would be fun to have fun with.
— James Baldwin
I hoped to burn out, through Hella, my image of Giovanni and the reality of his touch - I hoped to drive out fire with fire.
— James Baldwin
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
— James Baldwin
I am a big devourer of James Baldwin.
— Don Lemon
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
— James Baldwin
Great art can only be created out of love.
— James A. Baldwin
The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.
— James Baldwin
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
— James Baldwin
Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
— James Baldwin
I am what time, circumstance, and history have made of me, certainly, but i am also much more than that. So are we all.
— James Baldwin
One writes out of one thing only-one's own experience,
— James A. Baldwin
I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.
— James A. Baldwin
She, who had descended with such joy and pain, had begun her upward climb - upward, with her baby, on the steep, steep side of the mountain.
— James Baldwin
I am aware that no man is a villain in his own eyes.
— James A. Baldwin
Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours.
— James A. Baldwin
These captive men are the hidden price for a hiden lie: the righteous must be able to locate the damned.
— James Baldwin
This is the charged, the dangerous moment, when everything must be re-examined, must be made new, when nothing at all can be taken for granted.
— James Baldwin
Life is more important than art; that's what makes art important.
— James A. Baldwin
One day, to everyone's astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.
— James A. Baldwin
Whoever debases others is debasing himself.
— James Baldwin
Observing that, from this height, the city which had been so dark as he walked through it seemed to be on fire.
— James Baldwin
It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.
— James Baldwin
There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it.
— James Baldwin
You cannot fix what you will not face.
— James A. Baldwin
We live in a nation of pigs and murderers.
— James Baldwin
Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.
— James Baldwin
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also so much more than that. So are we all.
— James Baldwin
Every human being is an unprecedented miracle.
— James A. Baldwin
The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.
— James Baldwin
I don't know any writers who don't drink.
— James Baldwin
You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.
— James A. Baldwin
He grins again, and everything inside me moves. Oh, love. Love.
— James Baldwin
Everything was as it had been between us, and at the same time everything was different.
— James Baldwin
Being in the pulpit, was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion worked.
— James A. Baldwin
It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians and, although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians is you
— James Baldwin
Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
— James Baldwin
But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.
— James Baldwin
Love forces, at last, this humility: you cannot love if you cannot be loved, you cannot see if you cannot be seen.
— James Baldwin
And no matter what I was doing, another me sat in my belly, absolutely cold with terror over the question of my life.
— James Baldwin
If the world wasn't so full of dead folks maybe those of us that's trying to live wouldn't have to suffer so bad.
— James Baldwin
I was guilty and irritated and full of love and pain. I wanted to kick him and I wanted to take him in my arms.
— James Baldwin
Man cannot live by profit alone.
— James A. Baldwin