James A. Baldwin Quotes About Identity

Quotes about: Identity

• What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Believe, Hero

• What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really appear to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free. That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe because they couldn't stay there any longer and had to go somewhere else to make it. That's all. They were hungry, they were poor, they were convicts. Those who were making it in England, for example, did not get on the Mayflower. That's how the country was settled.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Believe, Hero

• What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors.

  James A. Baldwin

  America, Identity, Heroic

  "For the Love of God — and Country" by Bryan Berghoef, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 27, 2013.

• Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.

  James A. Baldwin

  Change, Self, Giving

  "The Devil Finds Work". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1976.

• An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

  James A. Baldwin

  Identity, Use, Way

• Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization of ourselves; the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his.

  James A. Baldwin

  Loss, Justice, Diversity

• Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.

  James A. Baldwin

  Change, Breakup, Real

  "Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1961.

• Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free - he has set himself free - for higher dreams, for greater privileges.

  James A. Baldwin

  Breakup, Dream, Real

  "Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1961.

• An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger.

  James A. Baldwin

  Fall, Identity, Stranger

• To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.

  James A. Baldwin

  Identity, Way, Achieve

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