James A. Baldwin Quotes - Page 9

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• But to look back from the stony plain along the road which led one to that place is not at all the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective to say the very least, changes only with the journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen from any other place.

  James A. Baldwin

  Journey, Perspective, Looks

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• Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real.

  James A. Baldwin

  Real, War, Artist

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• The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.

  James A. Baldwin

  Art, Creativity, Being Alone

  "The Creative Process" by James A. Baldwin originally published in The National Culture Center's "Creative America", 1962, and later published in James A. Baldwin "The Price of the Ticket", 1985.

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• Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise. If we do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Hands, Racism

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

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• There are, forever, swamps to be drained, cities to be created, mines to be exploited, children to be fed ... But the conquest of the physical world is not man’s only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through vast forests, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.

  James A. Baldwin

  Children, Men, Artist

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• The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.

  James A. Baldwin

  Reality, Artistic, Force

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• When human rights are abused on a grand scale, the broth of purity boils and feeds the rebellion of a new order.

  James A. Baldwin

  Rights, Order, Revolution

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• The future is like heaven-everyone exalts it but no one wants to go there now.

  James A. Baldwin

  Time, Memories, Future

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• It happened, as many things do, imperceptibly, in many ways at once. I date it - the slow crumbling of my faith, the pulverization of my fortress - from the time, about a year after I had begun to preach, when I began to read again. I justified this desire by the fact that I was still in school, and I began, fatally, with Dostoyevsky.

  James A. Baldwin

  School, Years, Desire

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• People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

  James A. Baldwin

  Wisdom, People, History

  "Justice at last?" by Gary Younge, www.theguardian.com. June 5, 2005.

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• It is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know-which is the price of your performance and survival-you do not exist. It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, you.

  James A. Baldwin

  Gratitude, People, Justice

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• Each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other - male in female, female in male, white in black, and black in white. We are part of each other. Many of my countrymen appear to find this fact exceedingly inconvenient and even unfair, and so, very often, do I. But none of us can do anything about it.

  James A. Baldwin

  White, Forever, Black

  "The Price of the Ticket". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1985.

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• When the book comes out it may hurt you - but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.

  James A. Baldwin

  Hurt, Book, Reading

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• The male cannot bear very much humiliation; and he really cannot bear it, it obliterates him.

  James A. Baldwin

  Males, Bears, Humiliation

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• For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

  James A. Baldwin

  Unbearable

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• Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always be seen as untimely. This is because a real writer is always shifting and changing and searching. The world has many labels for him, of which the most treacherous is the label of Success.

  James A. Baldwin

  Real, Writing, Labels

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• Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a fraud. No other city is so spitefully incoherent.

  James A. Baldwin

  New York, Mistake, Cities

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• Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.

  James A. Baldwin

  Running, Smart, Teaching

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• In my case, I think my exile saved my life, for it inexorably confirmed something which Americans appear to have great difficulty accepting. Which is, simply, this: a man is not a man until he is able and willing to accept his own vision of the world, no matter how radically this vision departs from others.

  James A. Baldwin

  Men, Thinking, Vision

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

  James A. Baldwin

  Why Not

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• Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.

  James A. Baldwin

  Justice, Experience, Innocence

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• 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 A. Baldwin

  Long, Doe, World

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• Because I was raised in a Christian culture I never considered myself to be a totally free human being.

  James A. Baldwin

  Christian, Culture, Raised

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• Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle.

  James A. Baldwin

  America, Society, Battle

  "Notes of a Native Son". Book by James Baldwin, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 21, 1955.

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• Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated – in the main, abominably – because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.

  James A. Baldwin

  Echoes, Profound, Desire

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