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
No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable. – 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
I love America more than any other country in this world; and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. – James Baldwin