James A. Baldwin Quotes About Social Justice

Quotes about: Social Justice

• Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

  James A. Baldwin

  Hate, Men, Law

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

  James A. Baldwin

  Family, Education, Wisdom

  Nobody Knows My Name (1961) "Fifth Avenue, Uptown: a letter from Harlem"

• Not only was I not born to be a slave; I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.

  James A. Baldwin

  Justice, Diversity, Culture

• 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

• To be born in a free society and not to be born free is to be born into a lie. To be told by co-citizens and co-Christians that you have no value, no history, have never done anything that is worthy of human respect destroys you because in the beginning you believe it.

  James A. Baldwin

  Christian, Lying, Believe

• Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievements must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Recovery, Justice

• The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.

  James A. Baldwin

  Men, White Man, Justice

• The real victim of bigotry is the white man who hides his weakness under his myth of superiority.

  James A. Baldwin

  Real, Men, White Man

• 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 A. Baldwin

  Land, Ties, Justice

• It is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know-which is the price of your performance and survival-you do not exist. It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, you.

  James A. Baldwin

  Gratitude, People, Justice

• Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.

  James A. Baldwin

  Justice, Experience, Innocence

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

  James A. Baldwin

  Order, Justice, Diversity

• If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving. And, after all, one can give freedom only by setting someone free.

  James A. Baldwin

  Giving, Justice, Diversity

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

• 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

• The miracle is that some have stepped out of the rags of the Republic's definition to assume the great burden and glory of their humanity and their responsibility for one another. It is an extraordinary achievement to be trapped in the dungeon of color and to dare to shake down its walls and to step out of it leaving the jailkeeper in the rubble.

  James A. Baldwin

  Wall, Responsibility, Color

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