James A. Baldwin Quotes - Page 12

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• America sometimes resembles, at least from the point of view of a black man, an exceedingly monotonous minstrel show; the same dances, same music, same jokes. One has done (or been) the show so long that one can do it in one’s own sleep.

  James A. Baldwin

  Sleep, Men, Views

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• After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So-Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.

  James A. Baldwin

  Bridges, Paris, My Best Friend

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• I think white gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, in a society in which they were supposed to be safe. The anomaly of their sexuality puts them in danger, unexpectedly.

  James A. Baldwin

  Gay, Thinking, White

  "Black Manhood in James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines, and August Wilson". Book by Keith Clark, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2002.

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• Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievements must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Recovery, Justice

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• All of us know, whether or not we are able to admit it, that mirrors can only lie, that death by drowning is all that awaits one there. It is for this reason that love is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

  James A. Baldwin

  Lying, Love Is, Mirrors

  "Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

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• 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 A. Baldwin

  Inspirational Love, Faces, Lovers

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• 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 A. Baldwin

  Lasts, Helping, Understood

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• Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.

  James A. Baldwin

  Home, Mean, Thinking

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• Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.

  James A. Baldwin

  Inspirational, Faithful, Excess

  "Stranger in the Village", Harper's, October 1953.

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• People can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street.

  James A. Baldwin

  Kids, People, Psychology

  "James Baldwin Back Home" by Robert Coles, archive.nytimes.com. July 31, 1977.

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• The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.

  James A. Baldwin

  Keys, Diversity, Literature

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• If all you want to do is make money, the very last thing you need is imagination.

  James A. Baldwin

  Imagination, Needs, Want

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• Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty - necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.

  James A. Baldwin

  Spiritual, Arrogance, Atheism

  "Letter from a Region of My Mind" by James A. Baldwin in "The New Yorker" (November 17, 1962), republished as "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind" in James A. Baldwin "The Fire Next Time", 1963.

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• I am certainly convinced that it is one of the greatest impulses of mankind to arrive at something higher than a natural state.

  James A. Baldwin

  Destiny, Natural, States

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• The moral authority in the Western world is gone. And it is gone forever. It is gone, not because of the criminal record--everybody's record is criminal. It is gone because you cannot do one thing and pretend you're doing another! None of us, who are sitting around in some of the true limbo out-of-space, which we call "now," waiting to be saved, civilized, or discovered, have the moral authority to say anything.

  James A. Baldwin

  Space, Waiting, Forever

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• I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.

  James A. Baldwin

  Childhood, Usual, Stories

  "Autobiographical Notes" by James A. Baldwin (1952), republished in James A. Baldwin "Notes of a Native Son" (1955), archive.nytimes.com.

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• I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it--it, the physical act. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine.

  James A. Baldwin

  Sleep, Rivers, People

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• I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.

  James A. Baldwin

  Book, World, Wonder

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• One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.

  James A. Baldwin

  Darkness, Return, Responsible

  "Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James A. Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

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• A devotion to humanity is... too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.

  James A. Baldwin

  Humanity, Atheism, Causes

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• Women manage, quite brilliantly, on the whole, and to stunning and unforeseeable effect, to survive and surmount being defined by others. They dismiss the definition, however dangerous or wounding it may be-- or even, sometimes, find a way to utilize it.

  James A. Baldwin

  May, Definitions, Way

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• Even the most incorrigible maverick has to be born somewhere. He may leave the group that produced him-he may be forced to-but nothing will efface his origins, the marks of which he carries with him everywhere. I think it is important to know this and even find it a matter for rejoicing, as the strongest people do, regardless of their station. On this acceptance, literally, the life of a writer depends.

  James A. Baldwin

  Acceptance, Thinking, Origin Of Life

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• The world tends to trap you in the role you play and it is always extremely hard to maintain a watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is.

  James A. Baldwin

  Distance, Play, Roles

  "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy". Esquire, May 1961.

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• He may be a very nice man. But I haven't got the time to figure that out. All I know is, he's got a uniform and a gun and I have to relate to him that way. That's the only way to relate to him because one of us may have to die.

  James A. Baldwin

  Nice, Gun, Men

  "Mamie Till's warning still holds true in a racist world" by Gary Younge, www.theguardian.com. April 8, 2012.

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• And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.

  James A. Baldwin

  Sky, World, Trouble

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