Logo
Quotes by

James Baldwin

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an immediate knowledge of its ugly side. – James Baldwin

The greatest significance of the present student generation is that it is through them that the point of view of the subjugated is finally and inexorably being expressed. – James Baldwin

No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable. – James Baldwin

The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men. – James Baldwin

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned. – James Baldwin

He may be a very nice man. But I havent got the time to figure that out. All I know is, hes got a uniform and a gun and I have to relate to him that way. Thats the only way to relate to him because one of us may have to die. – James Baldwin

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention. – James Baldwin

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

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned. – James Baldwin

It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless. – James Baldwin

You know, its 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 Baldwin

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 Baldwin

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land. – James Baldwin

The future is… black. – James Baldwin

It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be. – James Baldwin

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. – James Baldwin

Words like freedom, justice, democracy are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply. – James Baldwin

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love. – James Baldwin

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

Anyone who has struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. – James Baldwin