James A. Baldwin Quotes - Page 11

Quotes about:

• Hatred destroys the person who hates.

  James A. Baldwin

  Hate, Hatred, Persons

  5 Copy quote

• Then I buckled up my shoes, and I started.

  James A. Baldwin

  Inspirational, Shoes

  6 Copy quote

• The male cannot bear very much humiliation; and he really cannot bear it, it obliterates him.

  James A. Baldwin

  Males, Bears, Humiliation

  4 Copy quote

• It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, People, Speak

  5 Copy quote

• If you really want to know something about solitude, become famous.

  James A. Baldwin

  Solitude, Want, Knows

  4 Copy quote

• It is impossible to pretend that you are not heir to, and therefore, however inadequately or unwillingly, responsible to, and for, the time and place that give you life -- without becoming, at very best, a dangerously disoriented human being.

  James A. Baldwin

  Giving, Heirs, Becoming

  4 Copy quote

• If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they're real for you whether they're real or not.

  James A. Baldwin

  Real, Swag, Way

  11 Copy quote

• Rage cannot be hidden, it can only be dissembled. This dissembling deludes the thoughtless, and strengthens rage and adds, to rage, contempt.

  James A. Baldwin

  Anger, Add, Rage

  7 Copy quote

• I started reading. I read everything I could get my hands on...By the time I was thirteen I had read myself out of Harlem. I had read every book in two libraries and had a card for the Forty-Second Street branch.

  James A. Baldwin

  Book, Reading, Hands

  6 Copy quote

• It is perfectly possible to be enamoured of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French.

  James A. Baldwin

  Paris, French Culture, Eiffel Tower

  8 Copy quote

• To hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first . . . acceptance totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are [;] . . . the second . . . that one must never, in one's life, accept . . . injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength.

  James A. Baldwin

  Fighting, Acceptance, Men

  5 Copy quote

• I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.

  James A. Baldwin

  Travel, Discovery, Europe

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

• Sometimes you hear a person speak the truth and you know that they are speaking the truth. But you also know that they have not heard themselves, do not know what they have said: do not know that they have revealed much more than they have said. This may be why the truth remains, on the whole, so rare.

  James A. Baldwin

  May, Sometimes, Speak

  4 Copy quote

• History is not a procession of illustrious people. It's about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.

  James A. Baldwin

  People, Happens, Procession

  4 Copy quote

• Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

  James A. Baldwin

  Change, Literature, Human Nature

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

  8 Copy quote

• When the South has trouble with its Negroes - when the Negroes refuse to remain in their "place" - it blames "outside agitators" and "Northern interference." When the nation has trouble with the Northern Negro, it blames the Kremlin.

  James A. Baldwin

  Blame, Trouble, Refuse

  "Collected Essays". Book by James A. Baldwin, archive.nytimes.com. 1998.

  4 Copy quote

• Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

  James A. Baldwin

  Writing, Editors, Literature

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

  8 Copy quote

• I will no longer take anyone's word for my experience.

  James A. Baldwin

  7 Copy quote

• If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

  James A. Baldwin

  Fathers Day, Son, Earth

  84 Copy quote

• You don't need numbers; you need passion, and this is proven by the history of the world!

  James A. Baldwin

  Passion, Numbers, Needs

  8 Copy quote

• America sometimes resembles, at least from the point of view of a black man, an exceedingly monotonous minstrel show; the same dances, same music, same jokes. One has done (or been) the show so long that one can do it in one’s own sleep.

  James A. Baldwin

  Sleep, Men, Views

  10 Copy quote

• I think white gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, in a society in which they were supposed to be safe. The anomaly of their sexuality puts them in danger, unexpectedly.

  James A. Baldwin

  Gay, Thinking, White

  "Black Manhood in James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines, and August Wilson". Book by Keith Clark, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2002.

  5 Copy quote

• All of us know, whether or not we are able to admit it, that mirrors can only lie, that death by drowning is all that awaits one there. It is for this reason that love is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

  James A. Baldwin

  Lying, Love Is, Mirrors

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

  4 Copy quote

• Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.

  James A. Baldwin

  Lasts, Helping, Understood

  9 Copy quote

Page 11 of 16

First

← Prev

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin