James A. Baldwin Quotes - Page 3

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• Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.

  James A. Baldwin

  Inspirational, Life, War

  "Breaking Into James Baldwin's House" by Thomas Chatterton Williams, www.newyorker.com. October 28, 2015.

  9 Copy quote

• It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.

  James A. Baldwin

  Spiritual, Children, Hate

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

  52 Copy quote

• I can't be a pessimist, because I am alive.

  James A. Baldwin

  Alive, Pessimist, I Am Alive

  28 Copy quote

• Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death - ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.

  James A. Baldwin

  Passion, Army, Sacrifice

  "Letter from a Region of My Mind". The New Yorker, November 17, 1962. Republished in "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin as "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind", 1963.

  26 Copy quote

• 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"

  87 Copy quote

• The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.

  James A. Baldwin

  Ideas, White, Progress

  77 Copy quote

• I'm not interested in anybody's guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn't do it, and I didn't do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason... Anyone who is trying to be conscious must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we've used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Lying, Responsibility

  56 Copy quote

• Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.

  James A. Baldwin

  Inspirational, Knows, Ifs

  26 Copy quote

• The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.

  James A. Baldwin

  Way, Facts, Force

  23 Copy quote

• 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

  47 Copy quote

• I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

  James A. Baldwin

  African American, Philanthropy, Made

  17 Copy quote

• Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.

  James A. Baldwin

  Happiness, Lying, Discipline

  The Paris Review Interview (Issues 91-94, p. 77), 1984.

  43 Copy quote

• The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

  James A. Baldwin

  Life, Happiness, Success

  "Collected Essays, Vol. 2". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1998.

  60 Copy quote

• This is the charged, the dangerous moment, when everything must be re-examined, must be made new, when nothing at all can be taken for granted.

  James A. Baldwin

  Taken, Moments, Granted

  28 Copy quote

• If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.

  James A. Baldwin

  Thinking, Ifs

  18 Copy quote

• Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.

  James A. Baldwin

  Reality, Color, Political

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

  64 Copy quote

• You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.

  James A. Baldwin

  Intelligent, Realizing, Trouble

  "James Baldwin: Reflections of a Maverick". Interview with Julius Lester, The New York Times, May 27, 1984.

  9 Copy quote

• The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

  James A. Baldwin

  Life, Change, Needs

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

  18 Copy quote

• There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

  James A. Baldwin

  Time, Future, Blessing

  "James Baldwin: 10 insightful quotes on his birthday" by Elizabeth Drake, www.csmonitor.com. August 02, 2012.

  16 Copy quote

• It comes as a great shock…to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance…has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, and although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you.

  James A. Baldwin

  Flags, Killing, Shock

  Speech at Cambridge University, 17 Feb. 1965, in New York Times Magazine 7 March 1965, p. 32

  91 Copy quote

• I think that the inability to love is the central problem, because that inability masks a certain terror, and that terror is the terror of being touched. And if you can't be touched, you can't be changed. And if you can't be changed, you can't be alive.

  James A. Baldwin

  Love Is, Thinking, Inability To Love

  29 Copy quote

• God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead.

  James A. Baldwin

  Book, Voice

  33 Copy quote

• It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

  James A. Baldwin

  Education, Country, Independent

  44 Copy quote

• The trick is to love somebody.... If you love one person, you see everybody else differently.

  James A. Baldwin

  Love You, Tricks, Persons

  19 Copy quote

• American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

  James A. Baldwin

  Beautiful, Literature, American History

  "James Baldwin’s Lesson for Teachers in a Time of Turmoil" by Clint Smith, www.newyorker.com. September 23, 2017.

  32 Copy quote

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