We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can… — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
If you really want to know something about solitude, become famous. — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you'll never make it. — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
If all you want to do is make money, the very last thing you need is imagination. — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
In the invincible and indescribable squalor of Harlem ... I was tormented. I felt caged, like an animal. I wanted to escape.… — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving. And, after all, one can give freedom only by setting… — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is… — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the… — James A. 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 Dostoevsky… — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
Art has to be a kind of confession. I don't mean a true confession in the sense of that dreary magazine. The… — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The trick is to love somebody… If you love one person, you see everybody else differently. — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be… — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
You've got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated,… — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise. If we do not falter in… — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
I think that the inability to love is the central problem, because that inability masks a certain terror, and that terror is… — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
One cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own. — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative. — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The American ideal is, after all, that everyone should be as much alike as possible. — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life. — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
