James Baldwin quotes - page 7

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)
After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart! And we can only repossess them in our minds.
James Baldwin
We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.
James Baldwin
The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.
James Baldwin
You took the best, so why not take the rest?
James Baldwin
But, when the chips are down, its better to be furious with someone you love, or frightened for someone you love, than be put through the merciless horror of being ashamed of someone you love.
James Baldwin
Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
James Baldwin
how can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do, or the way they say they should?
James Baldwin
There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
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
When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living. (James Baldwin)
Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.
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 Baldwin
I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.
James Baldwin
To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.
James Baldwin
The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.
James Baldwin
The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love.
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 did - which was to hide.
James Baldwin
Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings.
James Baldwin
The roles that we construct are constructed because we feel that they will help us to survive and also, of course, because they fulfill something in our personalities; and one does not, therefore, cease playing a role simply because one has begun to understand it.
James Baldwin
What force, precisely, is operating when a prisoner is advised, requested, ordered, intimidated, or forced, to confess to a crime he has not committed, and promised a lighter sentence for so perjuring and debasing himself? Does the law exist for the purpose of furthering the ambitions of those who have sworn to uphold the law, or is it seriously to be considered as a moral, unifying force, the health and strength of a nation? (James Baldwin)
Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.
James Baldwin
Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.
James Baldwin
I don't like people who like me because I'm a Negro; neither do I like people who find in the same accident grounds for contempt. I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright.
James Baldwin
It is true that two wrongs don't make a right, as we love to point out to the people we have wronged. But one wrong doesn't make a right, either.
James Baldwin