James Baldwin quotes
Not everything that is faced
can be changed, but nothing
can be changed until it is faced.
can be changed, but nothing
can be changed until it is faced.
People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them
American history is longer, larger, more various,
more beautiful, &
more terrible
than anything
anyone has
ever said
about it.
Love takes
off masks
we fear we
can't live without & know
can't live without & know
we cannot live within.
It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is
the most ferocious enemy
justice can have.
Love does not
begin and end
the way we seem
to think it does.
Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.
The most dangerous creation of society is the man who has nothing to lose.
Children haven't been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed
to imitate them.
I imagine
one of the
reasons people
cling to their
hates so hard
is because they sense once hate
is gone they will
be forced to deal with pain.
It was books that taught me the things that tormented me most
were the very things
that connected
me with all
the people
who were alive,
who had ever been alive.”
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death.
One ought to
decide, indeed,
to earn one's death by confronting
with passion the conundrum of life
Freedom is not something that anybody can be
given.
Freedom
is something
people take, &
people are as
free as they want to be”
I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
All art is
a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.”
a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.”
People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.”
I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.”
The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. ”
Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”
People can cry much easier than they can change.”
It is very nearly impossible
to become an educated
person in a country
so distrustful of the
independent mind.”
I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state
of being, or a state of grace not in the
infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough & universal sense of quest & daring
& growth.”
People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in
the name of love. Then, when
they've killed you by what they
made you go through,
they say you didn't have any character
They weep big tears
not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy.”
Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are
no limits to where you can go.
,
People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts,
their lovers,
their friends
anymore than they can invent their parents.
Life gives these &
takes them away.
the great
difficulty is
to say Yes to life.
"There are so
many ways of
being despicable it quite makes
one’s head spin.
But the way to be
be really despicable.
is to be contemptuous of other
peoples pain."
“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”
The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.”
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.”
You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.”
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