America Quotes by James A. Baldwin

9 America quotes by James A. Baldwin

All America quotes James A. Baldwin’s page

Baldwin’s deep insight on the United States appears in nine brief, powerful statements. They confront the nation’s complexities around race, culture, and humanity.

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We can make America what America must become.

James A. Baldwin

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What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors.

James A. Baldwin

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To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.

James A. Baldwin

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It seems to be typical of life in America ... that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.

James A. Baldwin

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What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that…

James A. Baldwin

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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

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European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself…

James A. Baldwin

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What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that…

James A. Baldwin

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I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to…

James A. Baldwin

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More by James A. Baldwin

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

James A. Baldwin

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All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.

James A. Baldwin

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

James A. Baldwin

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

James A. Baldwin

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The American ideal of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal of masculinity. This idea has created cowboys and Indians, good guys…

James A. Baldwin

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

James A. Baldwin

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We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; and yet it is precisely…

James A. Baldwin

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The American ideal is, after all, that everyone should be as much alike as possible.

James A. Baldwin

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James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped…

James A. Baldwin

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I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life.

James A. Baldwin

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

James A. Baldwin

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An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or…

James A. Baldwin

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White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved…

James A. Baldwin

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A devotion to humanity is... too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.

James A. Baldwin

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Most people... find a disorientating mismatch between the long-term nature of their liabilities and the increasingly short-term nature of their assets.

James A. Baldwin

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