James Baldwin quotes - page 2

James Baldwin was an influential American writer and social critic, acclaimed for his insightful essays, novels, and plays exploring issues of race, sexuality, and identity. His works challenged the status quo and gave a powerful voice to the civil rights movement. He remains a pivotal figure in American literature and a champion of social justice. Here are 215 of his quotes:

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. (James Baldwin)

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

James Baldwin

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

James Baldwin

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

James Baldwin

The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

James Baldwin

If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they're real for you whether they're real or not.

James Baldwin

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

James Baldwin

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

James Baldwin

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

James Baldwin

There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

James Baldwin

Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black. (James Baldwin)

Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.

James Baldwin

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread.

James Baldwin

You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

James Baldwin

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

James Baldwin

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

James Baldwin

Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.

James Baldwin

Americans should never come to Europe,' she said, and tried to laugh and began to cry, 'it means they never can be happy again. What's the good of an American who isn't happy? Happiness was all we had.

James Baldwin

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

James Baldwin

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

The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no moral standards in the world at all. (James Baldwin)

If the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.

James Baldwin

Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.

James Baldwin

At the rate things are going here, all of Africa will be free before we can get a lousy cup of coffee.

James Baldwin

When the South has trouble with its Negroes - when the Negroes refuse to remain in their "place" - it blames "outside agitators" and "Northern interference." When the nation has trouble with the Northern Negro, it blames the Kremlin.

James Baldwin

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James Baldwin

James Baldwin - Image

Photo: Allan warren, GFDL

Occupation: American Novelist
Born: August 2, 1924
Died: December 1, 1987
Quotes count: 215
Wikipedia: James Baldwin

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