“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 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
“The question is really a kind of apathy and ignorance, which is the price we pay for segregation. That’s what segregation means.… — 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
“I don't give a damn if there's any hope for them or not. But I know that I am not about to… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are eager… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent… — 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
