James A. Baldwin Quotes

Quotes about:

• Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.

  James A. Baldwin

  Inspirational, Change, Leadership

  "As Much Truth As One Can Bear". The New York Times Book Review, January 14, 1962.

  251 Copy quote

• I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.

  James A. Baldwin

  Inspirational, Believe, I Can

  "A Mother’s Story: It Is Not What We Say to Black Boys and Men, It Is What We Do to Them" by Laura W. Murphy, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 30, 2012.

  155 Copy quote

• One cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own.

  James A. Baldwin

  Humanity, Deny

  41 Copy quote

• 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 A. Baldwin

  Forgiveness, Encouragement, Pain

  "Me and My House". Harper's Magazine, November 1955.

  132 Copy quote

• You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.

  James A. Baldwin

  Ideas, World, Force

  103 Copy quote

• The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

  James A. Baldwin

  Children, Challenges, Live In The Moment

  "James Baldwin: My Uncle and His Love Life" by T. Better Baldwin, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 30, 2014.

  17 Copy quote

• For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

  James A. Baldwin

  Change, Children, Acceptance

  "The Fire Next Time". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1963.

  95 Copy quote

• The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.

  James A. Baldwin

  Fit

  "Another Country" by Claudia Roth Pierpont, www.newyorker.com. February 9, 2009.

  113 Copy quote

• Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person - ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Ignorance, Men

  "No Name in the Street". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1972.

  172 Copy quote

• People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.

  James A. Baldwin

  Eye, Reality, People

  "Stranger in the Village". Essay by James A. Baldwin, first published in Harper's Magazine (1953), republished in James A. Baldwin "Notes of a Native Son" (1955), and later quoted in "Black Body: Rereading James Baldwin's 'Stranger in the Village'" by Teju Cole, www.newyorker.com. August 19, 2014.

  67 Copy quote

• 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 A. Baldwin

  Motivational, Freedom, Individual Effort

  "The Crusade of Indignation" by James A. Baldwin in "The Nation" (New York, July 7, 1956); later quoted in James A. Baldwin "The Price of the Ticket", 1985.

  22 Copy quote

• We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it.

  James A. Baldwin

  World, Charity, Philanthropy

  53 Copy quote

• In order to have a conversation with someone you must reveal yourself.

  James A. Baldwin

  Order, Justice, Diversity

  13 Copy quote

• A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.

  James A. Baldwin

  Civilization, People, Wicked

  "Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

  73 Copy quote

• To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.

  James A. Baldwin

  America, Black, Rage

  "My Son Called Me The Hulk, And I’m OK With It" by Danielle Slaughter, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 28, 2016.

  90 Copy quote

• Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity

  James A. Baldwin

  Believe, Trying, Doe

  "A Letter to My Nephew" by James Baldwin, progressive.org. January 1, 1962.

  30 Copy quote

• The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.

  James A. Baldwin

  Lying, Expectations, World

  "The shot that echoes still" by James Baldwin, www.esquire.com. January 12, 2018.

  21 Copy quote

• Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be

  James A. Baldwin

  Inspirational, Freedom, Government

  Nobody Knows My Name (1961) "Notes for a Hypothetical Novel"

  36 Copy quote

• You've got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.

  James A. Baldwin

  World, Trouble, Treats

  34 Copy quote

• The purpose of education...is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.

  James A. Baldwin

  Education, Decision, Looks

  59 Copy quote

• You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.

  James A. Baldwin

  Pain, Thinking, People

  "Doom and glory of knowing who you are". Jane Howard, Life Magazine, Volume 54, No. 21 (p. 89), May 24, 1963.

  82 Copy quote

• If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected - those, precisely, who need the law's protection most! - and listens to their testimony.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Law, Class

  "No Name in the Street". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1972.

  145 Copy quote

• 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 A. Baldwin

  Respect, People, Water

  "No Name in the Street". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1972.

  42 Copy quote

• You cannot fix what you will not face.

  James A. Baldwin

  Self Improvement, Faces

  33 Copy quote

• I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

  James A. Baldwin

  Inspirational, Country, Memorial Day

  "Notes of a Native Son". Book by James A. Baldwin, archive.nytimes.com. 1955.

  69 Copy quote

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