James A. Baldwin Quotes - Page 11

Quotes about:

• 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 A. Baldwin

  Thinking, Race, People

  9 Copy quote

• It must be remembered that in those great days I was considered to be an "integrationist" - this was never, quite, my own idea of myself - and Malcolm was considered to be a "racist in reverse." This formulation, in terms of power - and power is the arena in which racism is acted out - means absolutely nothing: it may even be described as a cowardly formulation. The powerless, by definition, can never be "racists," for they can never make the world pay for what they feel or fear except by the suicidal endeavor which makes them fanatics or revolutionaries, or both.

  James A. Baldwin

  Suicidal, Mean, Ideas

  5 Copy quote

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

  James A. Baldwin

  Love, Ambition, Literature

  8 Copy quote

• Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization of ourselves; the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his.

  James A. Baldwin

  Loss, Justice, Diversity

  50 Copy quote

• It is impossible to pretend that you are not heir to, and therefore, however inadequately or unwillingly, responsible to, and for, the time and place that give you life -- without becoming, at very best, a dangerously disoriented human being.

  James A. Baldwin

  Giving, Heirs, Becoming

  4 Copy quote

• The world's definitions are one thing and the life one actually lives is quite another. One cannot allow oneself, nor one's family, friends, or lovers - to say nothing of one's children - to live according to the world's definitions: one must find a way, perpetually, to be stronger and better than that.

  James A. Baldwin

  Children, Stronger, World

  8 Copy quote

• Youth must be the worst time in anybody's life. Everything's happening for the first time, which means that sorrow, then, lasts forever. Later, you can see that there was something very beautiful in it. That's because you ain't got to go through it no more.

  James A. Baldwin

  Beautiful, Mean, Forever

  5 Copy quote

• The wretched of the earth do not decide to become extinct, they resolve, on the contrary, to multiply: life is their weapon against life, life is all that they have.

  James A. Baldwin

  Earth, Weapons, Life Is

  5 Copy quote

• Then I buckled up my shoes, and I started.

  James A. Baldwin

  Inspirational, Shoes

  6 Copy quote

• Sometimes you hear a person speak the truth and you know that they are speaking the truth. But you also know that they have not heard themselves, do not know what they have said: do not know that they have revealed much more than they have said. This may be why the truth remains, on the whole, so rare.

  James A. Baldwin

  May, Sometimes, Speak

  4 Copy quote

• You took the best, so why not take the rest?

  James A. Baldwin

  Why Not

  7 Copy quote

• It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, People, Speak

  5 Copy quote

• 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 A. Baldwin

  Blame, Trouble, Refuse

  "Collected Essays". Book by James A. Baldwin, archive.nytimes.com. 1998.

  4 Copy quote

• I started reading. I read everything I could get my hands on...By the time I was thirteen I had read myself out of Harlem. I had read every book in two libraries and had a card for the Forty-Second Street branch.

  James A. Baldwin

  Book, Reading, Hands

  6 Copy quote

• 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 A. Baldwin

  Real, Swag, Way

  11 Copy quote

• It is perfectly possible to be enamoured of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French.

  James A. Baldwin

  Paris, French Culture, Eiffel Tower

  8 Copy quote

• Rage cannot be hidden, it can only be dissembled. This dissembling deludes the thoughtless, and strengthens rage and adds, to rage, contempt.

  James A. Baldwin

  Anger, Add, Rage

  7 Copy quote

• If you really want to know something about solitude, become famous.

  James A. Baldwin

  Solitude, Want, Knows

  4 Copy quote

• I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.

  James A. Baldwin

  Travel, Discovery, Europe

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  9 Copy quote

• To hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first . . . acceptance totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are [;] . . . the second . . . that one must never, in one's life, accept . . . injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength.

  James A. Baldwin

  Fighting, Acceptance, Men

  5 Copy quote

• Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

  James A. Baldwin

  Change, Literature, Human Nature

  "As Much Truth As One Can Bear". The New York Times Book Review, January 14, 1962.

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  James A. Baldwin

  People, Happens, Procession

  4 Copy quote

• 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 A. Baldwin

  Writing, Editors, Literature

  "Notes of a Native Son". Book by James A. Baldwin, archive.nytimes.com. 1955.

  8 Copy quote

• If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

  James A. Baldwin

  Fathers Day, Son, Earth

  84 Copy quote

• You don't need numbers; you need passion, and this is proven by the history of the world!

  James A. Baldwin

  Passion, Numbers, Needs

  8 Copy quote

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