James A. Baldwin Quotes - Page 7

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• For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.

  James A. Baldwin

  Light, Darkness, Black

  15 Copy quote

• A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, “I don’t look like that.” And Picasso replied, “You will.” And he was right.

  James A. Baldwin

  Reality, Risk, Portraits

  13 Copy quote

• What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really appear to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free. That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe because they couldn't stay there any longer and had to go somewhere else to make it. That's all. They were hungry, they were poor, they were convicts. Those who were making it in England, for example, did not get on the Mayflower. That's how the country was settled.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Believe, Hero

  9 Copy quote

• Yr crown has been bought and paid for. All you have to do is put it on yr head

  James A. Baldwin

  Crowns, Has Beens, Paid

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• To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, African American, Literature

  "A race riot forever changed my city. Hollywood only told half the story" by Bankole Thompson, www.theguardian.com. August 28, 2017.

  10 Copy quote

• One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.

  James A. Baldwin

  Blow, One Day, Astonishment

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

  18 Copy quote

• The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen ... Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.

  James A. Baldwin

  People, Needs, Done

  15 Copy quote

• People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.

  James A. Baldwin

  Eye, Reality, Long

  "Black Body: Rereading James Baldwin's 'Stranger in the Village'" by Teju Cole, www.newyorker.com. August 19, 2014.

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• It is said that the camera cannot lie, but rarely do we allow it to do anything else, since the camera sees what you point it at: the camera sees what you want it to see.

  James A. Baldwin

  Lying, Cameras, Want

  7 Copy quote

• The moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

  James A. Baldwin

  Faith, Teamwork, Kwanzaa

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

  17 Copy quote

• Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.

  James A. Baldwin

  Change, Self, Giving

  "The Devil Finds Work". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1976.

  18 Copy quote

• A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees.

  James A. Baldwin

  Risk

  17 Copy quote

• To be with God is really to be involved in some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you.

  James A. Baldwin

  God, Overwhelming Desire, Joy

  14 Copy quote

• The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through. Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not had had ever, really, been present at his life.

  James A. Baldwin

  Morning, Pain, Terrible Events

  16 Copy quote

• True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life

  James A. Baldwin

  Mistake, Passion, Rebel

  15 Copy quote

• I must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. . . . I know the spiritual wasteland to which that road leads . . . whoever debases others is debasing himself.

  James A. Baldwin

  Spiritual, Done, May

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• Not only was I not born to be a slave; I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.

  James A. Baldwin

  Justice, Diversity, Culture

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

  James A. Baldwin

  Education, School, White

  19 Copy quote

• To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

  James A. Baldwin

  Literature, Danger, Committed

  "A Letter to My Nephew" by James Baldwin, progressive.org. January 1, 1962.

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• This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.

  James A. Baldwin

  White, World, Ethics

  "This Lonesome Place" by Hilton Als, www.newyorker.com. January 29, 2001.

  8 Copy quote

• To defend oneself against a fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced.

  James A. Baldwin

  Life, One Day, Oneself

  9 Copy quote

• All racists are irresponsible.

  James A. Baldwin

  Race, Racism, Racist

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• Man cannot live by profit alone.

  James A. Baldwin

  Men, Profit, Live By

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• You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.

  James A. Baldwin

  Change, Writing, Reality

  10 Copy quote

• No man is a devil in his own mind.

  James A. Baldwin

  Men, Mind, Devil

  46 Copy quote

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