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
Children have never been good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. – 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
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