Quotes

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

“A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.” James Baldwin

“The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.” James Baldwin

“Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.” James Baldwin

“Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.” James Baldwin

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

“When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.” 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

“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” James Baldwin

“The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.” James Baldwin

“Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.” 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

“People can cry much easier than they can change.” James Baldwin

“Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.” James Baldwin

“The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.” James Baldwin

“I want to be an honest man and a good writer.” James Baldwin

“No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.” 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

“Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.” 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

“Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.” James Baldwin

“The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.” 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

“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

“There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.” James Baldwin

“To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.” 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

“When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.” 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