James A. Baldwin

I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others.

— James A. Baldwin

I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

— James A. Baldwin

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

— James A. Baldwin

If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you'll never make it.

— James A. Baldwin

Everything in life depends on how that life accepts its limits.

— James A. Baldwin

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

— James A. Baldwin

After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So-Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.

— James A. Baldwin

Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.

— James A. Baldwin

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

The past is what makes the present coherent, and the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to…

— James A. Baldwin

She was twenty and had come to realize that, though she had a voice, she wasn't a singer; that to endure and…

— James A. Baldwin

It is only because the world looks on his talent with such a frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make…

— James A. Baldwin

I am certainly convinced that it is one of the greatest impulses of mankind to arrive at something higher than a natural…

— James A. Baldwin

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

— James A. Baldwin

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and…

— James A. Baldwin

The greatest significance of the present student generation is that it is through them that the point of view of the subjugated…

— James A. Baldwin

It is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know-which is the price of your…

— James A. Baldwin

A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No…

— James A. Baldwin

Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must…

— James A. Baldwin

People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely…

— James A. Baldwin

Fonny and I just sat there... while the voices of the congregation rose and rose around us, without mercy... Teddy had the…

— James A. Baldwin

Such figures as Boy George do not disturb me nearly so much as do those relentlessly hetero (sexual?) keepers of the keys…

— James A. Baldwin

There are, forever, swamps to be drained, cities to be created, mines to be exploited, children to be fed ... But the…

— James A. Baldwin

Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their…

— James A. Baldwin

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

— James A. Baldwin

If all you want to do is make money, the very last thing you need is imagination.

— James A. Baldwin

When human rights are abused on a grand scale, the broth of purity boils and feeds the rebellion of a new order.

— James A. Baldwin

One cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own.

— James A. Baldwin

The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the…

— James A. Baldwin

To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.

— James A. Baldwin

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

— James A. Baldwin

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to…

— James A. Baldwin

One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we…

— James A. Baldwin

If the word integration means anything, this is what it means that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves…

— James A. Baldwin

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one…

— James A. Baldwin

An American Negro, however deep his sympathies, or however bright his rage, ceases to be simply a black man when he faces…

— James A. Baldwin

Rage can only with difficulty, and never entirely, be brought under the domination of the intelligence, and therefore is not susceptible to…

— James A. Baldwin

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a…

— James A. Baldwin

The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same…

— James A. Baldwin

I'm beginning to think that maybe everything that happens makes sense. Like, if it didn't make sense, how could it happen?

— James A. Baldwin