The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an immediate knowledge of its ugly side. – James Baldwin
Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock. – 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
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 most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. – E. M. Forster