“but what men imagine they are doing and what they are doing in fact are rarely the same thing.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.” — James Baldwin Art Copy Share Image
“Thursday’s great event was Aimé Cesaire’s speech in the afternoon, dealing with the relation between colonization and culture.” — James Baldwin Culture Copy Share Image
“No. It would help if I were able to feel guilty.But the end of innocence is also the end of guilt” — James Baldwin Guilt Copy Share Image
“I really mean that there was no love in the church. It was a mask for hatred and self-hatred and despair.” — James Baldwin Hatred Copy Share Image
“The person who distrusts himself has no touchstone for reality—for this touchstone can be only oneself.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“I am not trying to be méchant when I talk about women. I respect women—very much—for their inside life, which is not… — James Baldwin Life Copy Share Image
“If men don't know what's happening, what they're doing, where they're going--what are women to do? If Richard doesn't know what kind… — James Baldwin Feminism Copy Share Image
“I went down again. My heart and I went down again. I was aware of her hand. I was aware of my… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that… — James Baldwin America Copy Share Image
“I think the country has to find out what it means by freedom. Freedom is a very dangerous thing. Anything else is… — James Baldwin Freedom Copy Share Image
“It seems to be typical of life in America, where opportunities, real and fancied, are thicker than anywhere else on the globe,… — James Baldwin America 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 Books Copy Share Image
“There were hardly any coloured people in the town I grew up in – how am I to know?’ And she hated… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“I know that people can be better than they are. We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that… — James Baldwin Burdens Copy Share Image
“Looking at his face, it sometimes came to her that all women had been cursed from the cradle; all, in one fashion… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“In the realm of power, Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty—necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who… — James Baldwin Christianity Copy Share Image
“And all this is happening in the richest and freest country in the world, and in the middle of the 20th century.… — james baldwin Copy Share Image
“I did not intend to allow the white people of this country to tell me who I was, and limit me that… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“dismiss white people as the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing. One watched the lives they led. One could not be… — James Baldwin Brainwashing Copy Share Image
“Oedipus did not remember the thongs that bound his feet; nevertheless the marks they left testified to that doom toward which his… — James Baldwin Darkness Copy Share Image
“I realized that the Bible had been written by white men. I knew that, according to many Christians, I was a descendant… — James Baldwin Bible Copy Share Image
“They preferred the invention because this invention expressed and corroborated their hates and fears so perfectly. It is just as well to… — James Baldwin Christianity Copy Share Image
“I was just as black as I had been the day that I was born. Therefore, when I faced a congregation, it… — James Baldwin Christianity Copy Share Image
“And the others, who have avoided all of these deaths, get up in the morning and go downtown to meet “the man.”… — James Baldwin Death Copy Share Image
“The projects are hideous, of course, there being a law, apparently respected throughout the world, that popular housing shall be as cheerless… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Only a man can see in the face of a woman the girl she was. It is a secret which can be… — James Baldwin America Copy Share Image
“The trouble with a secret life is that it is very frequently a secret from the person who lives it and not… — James Baldwin Dreams Copy Share Image
“Many have given up. They stay home and watch the TV screen, living on the earnings of their parents, cousins, bothers, or… — James Baldwin Apathy Copy Share Image
“For I am—or I was—one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision… — James Baldwin Character 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 History Copy Share Image
“If your countrymen think that privacy is a crime, so much the worse for your country.” — James Baldwin Cybersecurity Copy Share Image
“It doesn't do any good to fight with Sonny. Sonny just moves back, inside himself, where he can't be reached.” — James Baldwin Fight Copy Share Image
“No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“It goes without saying, I believe, that if we understood ourselves better, we would damage ourselves less.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“he died because, at the bottom of his heart, he really believed what white people said about him. This is one of… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“quoted Djuna Barnes: “Too great a sense of identity makes a man feel he can do no wrong. And too little does… — James Baldwin Greatness Copy Share Image
“Men--not just babies like you, but old men, too--they always need a woman to tell them the truth. Les hommes, ils sont… — James Baldwin Feminism Copy Share Image
