James A. Baldwin Quotes - Page 7

Quotes about:

• The moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

  James A. Baldwin

  Faith, Teamwork, Kwanzaa

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

  16 Copy quote

• The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through.

  James A. Baldwin

  Knowing, Events

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• Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.

  James A. Baldwin

  Suicidal, Self, Hatred

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• Society is held together by our need; we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden.

  James A. Baldwin

  Society, Together, Foundation

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• To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, African American, Literature

  "A race riot forever changed my city. Hollywood only told half the story" by Bankole Thompson, www.theguardian.com. August 28, 2017.

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• For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for whatthey become.

  James A. Baldwin

  Children, Pay, Profit

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• It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.

  James A. Baldwin

  Men, Doe, Prejudice

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• A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, “I don’t look like that.” And Picasso replied, “You will.” And he was right.

  James A. Baldwin

  Reality, Risk, Portraits

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• One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.

  James A. Baldwin

  Blow, One Day, Astonishment

  "Fifth Avenue, Uptown" by James A. Baldwin, www.esquire.com. July 1960.

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• Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

  James A. Baldwin

  Liberty, Affliction, Crutches

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• The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen ... Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.

  James A. Baldwin

  People, Needs, Done

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• To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

  James A. Baldwin

  Literature, Danger, Committed

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

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• A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.

  James A. Baldwin

  Real, Shifting

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• The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through. Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not had had ever, really, been present at his life.

  James A. Baldwin

  Morning, Pain, Terrible Events

  16 Copy quote

• All racists are irresponsible.

  James A. Baldwin

  Race, Racism, Racist

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• The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

  James A. Baldwin

  Writing, Responsibility, People

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

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• To be with God is really to be involved in some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you.

  James A. Baldwin

  God, Overwhelming Desire, Joy

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• Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.

  James A. Baldwin

  Education, School, White

  19 Copy quote

• People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen forget.

  James A. Baldwin

  Pain, People, Hatred

  "Giovanni's Room". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1956.

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• I really do believe in the New Jerusalem. I really do believe that we can all become better than we are. I know we can. But the price is enormous and people are not yet willing to pay it.

  James A. Baldwin

  Believe, People, Pay

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• True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life

  James A. Baldwin

  Mistake, Passion, Rebel

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• You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.

  James A. Baldwin

  Change, Writing, Reality

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• All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours.

  James A. Baldwin

  Music, Men, Air

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• Man cannot live by profit alone.

  James A. Baldwin

  Men, Profit, Live By

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• There is something terribly radical about believing that one's own experience and images are important enough to speak about, much less to write about and to perform

  James A. Baldwin

  Believe, Writing, Important

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