“To accept one's past - one's history - is not the same things as drowning in it. An invented past can never… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Joyce is right about history being a nightmare—but it may be the nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“I know what I'm asking is impossible. But in our time, as in every time, the impossible is the least that one… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“In the context of the Negro problem neither whites nor blacks, for excellent reasons of their own, have the faintest desire to… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“The root of the black man's hatred is rage, and he does not so much had the white man as simply as… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“If we- and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“The paradox—and a fearful paradox it is—is that the American Negro can have no future anywhere, on any continent, as long as… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Is it possible to describe as a culture what may simply be, after all, a history of oppression? That is, is this… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it. And I know, which is… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Yet, if the American Negro has arrived at his identity by virtue of the absoluteness of his estrangement from his past, American… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“In any case, white people, who had robbed black people of their liberty and who profited by this theft every hour that they lived,… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live, and have lived here, are so ugly… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“All cultures have, furthermore, an economic, social, and political base, and no culture can continue to live if its political destiny is not in… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“I remembered that life in that room seemed to be occuring beneath the sea, time flowed past indiffrently above us, hours and days had… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“No. It would help if I were able to feel guilty.But the end of innocence is also the end of guilt” — James Baldwin Copy Share
“Perhaps now, though, he had hit bottom. One thing about the bottom, he told himself, you can't fall any further. He tried to take… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“What kind of friendship have you had? Or for that matter...what kind of love affairs?” — James Baldwin Copy Share
“For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.” — James Baldwin Copy Share
“Every society is really governed by hidden laws, by unspoken but profound assumptions on the part of the people, and ours is no exception.” — James Baldwin Copy Share
“In those days my mother was given to the exasperating and mysterious habit of having babies.” — James Baldwin Copy Share
“He was suggesting that all Negroes were held in a state of supreme tension between the difficult, dangerous relationship in which they stood to… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“In the beginning—and neither can this be overstated—a Negro just cannot believe that white people are treating him as they do; he does not… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“If the world wasn't so full of dead folks maybe those of us that's trying to live wouldn't have to suffer so bad.” — James Baldwin Copy Share
“I am very much concerned that American Negroes achieve their freedom here in the United States. But I am also concerned for their dignity,… — James Baldwin Copy Share
“The paradox—and a fearful paradox it is—is that the American Negro can have no future anywhere, on any continent, as long as he is… — James Baldwin Copy Share
