A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do. — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
If you really want to know something about solitude, become famous. — 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
Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves. — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is… — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
I really do believe in the New Jerusalem. I really do believe that we can all become better than we are. I… — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most… — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
You go into a book and you're in the dark, really. You go in with a certain fear and trembling. You know… — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person - ask the wretched how they fare in the halls… — James A. Baldwin Copy Share Image
When Americans look out on the world, they see nothing but dark and menacing strangers who appear to have no sense of… — 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
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. . . .… — 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
