James A. Baldwin Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.

  James A. Baldwin

  Heart, Answers

  17 Copy quote

• The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can. And if one despairs-- as who has not?-- of human love, God's love alone is left.

  James A. Baldwin

  Stars, Flower, Moon

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

  14 Copy quote

• Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.

  James A. Baldwin

  Suicidal, Self, Hatred

  17 Copy quote

• People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in order to console me for the wretchedness of blacks. But an itemized account of the American failure does not console me and it should not console anyone else. That hundreds of thousands of white people are living, in effect, no better than the "niggers" is not a fact to be regarded with complacency. The social and moral bankruptcy suggested by this fact is of the bitterest, most terrifying kind.

  James A. Baldwin

  Order, White, People

  "Fifth Avenue, Uptown" by James A. Baldwin, www.esquire.com. July 1960.

  5 Copy quote

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

  James A. Baldwin

  People, Culture, Literature

  17 Copy quote

• Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal.

  James A. Baldwin

  Two, Way, Allegiance

  12 Copy quote

• The American ideal is, after all, that everyone should be as much alike as possible.

  James A. Baldwin

  Conformity, Should, Ideals

  10 Copy quote

• Art has to be a kind of confession. I don't mean a true confession in the sense of that dreary magazine. The effort it seems to me, is: if you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover them, too - the terms with which they are connected to other people.

  James A. Baldwin

  Art, Mean, People

  Interview with Studs Terkel (1961), as quoted in "Conversations With James Baldwin" edited by Fred R. Standley and Louis H. Pratt, May 1, 1989.

  11 Copy quote

• It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own: in the face of one's victim, one sees oneself.

  James A. Baldwin

  Law, Justice, Humanity

  "Fifth Avenue, Uptown" by James A. Baldwin, www.esquire.com. July 1960.

  9 Copy quote

• There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.

  James A. Baldwin

  Ideas, People, Wish

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

  17 Copy quote

• I am aware that no man is a villain in his own eyes.

  James A. Baldwin

  Eye, Men, Humanity

  4 Copy quote

• When Americans look out on the world, they see nothing but dark and menacing strangers who appear to have no sense of rhythm at all, nor any respect or affection for white people; and white Americans really do not know what to make of all this, except to increase the defense budget.

  James A. Baldwin

  Dark, White, People

  16 Copy quote

• It is dangerous to be an American Negro male. America has never wanted its Negroes to be men, and does not, generally, treat them as men. It treats them as mascots, pets, or things.

  James A. Baldwin

  Men, America, Pet

  39 Copy quote

• Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it's true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.

  James A. Baldwin

  Dark, Artist, Safety

  "Conversations With James Baldwin". Book by James Baldwin, 1989.

  23 Copy quote

• Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?

  James A. Baldwin

  House, Burning, Want

  The Fire Next Time (1963)

  7 Copy quote

• 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 A. Baldwin

  Roots, Creating, Water

  7 Copy quote

• You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all.

  James A. Baldwin

  Blood, Way, Beats

  11 Copy quote

• 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 A. Baldwin

  Change, Breakup, Real

  "Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1961.

  14 Copy quote

• To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.

  James A. Baldwin

  Past, Clay, Cracks

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

  17 Copy quote

• You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world... The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way... people look at reality, then you can change it.

  James A. Baldwin

  Change, Writing, Reality

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

  12 Copy quote

• I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

  James A. Baldwin

  Inspirational, Positive, Motivational Sports

  57 Copy quote

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

  James A. Baldwin

  Funny, Uplifting, Baby

  31 Copy quote

• If the word 'integration' means anything, this is what it means that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.

  James A. Baldwin

  Brother, Mean, Reality

  "The Fire Next Time". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1963.

  54 Copy quote

• You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.

  James A. Baldwin

  Writing, Goal, Want

  4 Copy quote

• The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.

  James A. Baldwin

  Men, White Man, Justice

  21 Copy quote

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