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 responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him. – 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
James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare– but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them. – James Baldwin
I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog in which men and women trample themselves and die. Something magnificent is taking place here amidst the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme challenge to intelligence is that of making the noblest and best in our curious heritage prevail. – Charles Austin Beard