James Baldwin quotes - page 4

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)
You don't have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back. View quote
James Baldwin
Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity. View quote
James Baldwin
You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all. View quote
James Baldwin
Whoever debases others is debasing himself. View quote
James Baldwin
The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains. View quote
James Baldwin
Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it. View quote
James Baldwin
Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being. View quote
James Baldwin
People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. View quote
James Baldwin
There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior. View quote
James Baldwin
Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house? (James Baldwin)
Whatever you describe to another person is also a revelation of who you are and who you think you are. You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything. View quote
James Baldwin
When you're writing you're trying to find out something which you don't know. View quote
James Baldwin
The impossible is the least that one can demand. View quote
James Baldwin
History is not a procession of illustrious people. It's about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about. View quote
James Baldwin
I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change, who can teach-or people like myself, if I may say so, who are not afraid to eat a lobster alone as they take on their shoulders the monumental weight of thirty years. View quote
James Baldwin
For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom. View quote
James Baldwin
If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are. View quote
James Baldwin
There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive. View quote
James Baldwin
The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. View quote
James Baldwin
People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted. (James Baldwin)
For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for whatthey become. View quote
James Baldwin
Artists are here to disturb the peace. View quote
James Baldwin
We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have a sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be. View quote
James Baldwin
Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality. View quote
James Baldwin