James Baldwin quotes - page 6

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one's head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain. (James Baldwin)
Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.
James Baldwin
Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
James Baldwin
Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.
James Baldwin
Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.
James Baldwin
Yr crown has been bought and paid for. All you have to do is put it on yr head.
James Baldwin
There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.
James Baldwin
Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal.
James Baldwin
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
James Baldwin
A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
James Baldwin
People who cling to their illusions find it difficult, if not impossible, to learn anything worth learning: a people under the necessity of creating themselves must examine everything, and soak up learning the way the roots of a tree soak up water. (James Baldwin)
No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.
James Baldwin
Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
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
The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.
James Baldwin
Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?
James Baldwin
The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
James Baldwin
No man is a devil in his own mind.
James Baldwin
There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.
James Baldwin
The American ideal is, after all, that everyone should be as much alike as possible.
James Baldwin
Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore. (James Baldwin)
Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated – in the main, abominably – because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.
James Baldwin
The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.
James Baldwin
The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
James Baldwin
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.
James Baldwin