“In the beginning—and neither can this be overstated—a Negro just cannot believe that white people are treating him as they do; he… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“In the context of the Negro problem neither whites nor blacks, for excellent reasons of their own, have the faintest desire to… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Negroes want to be treated like men: a perfectly straightforward statement, containing only seven words. People who have mastered Kant, Hegel, Shakespeare,… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“The root of the black man's hatred is rage, and he does not so much had the white man as simply as… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Every white person in this country-and I do not care what he or she says-knows one thing. They may not know, as… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“The question is really a kind of apathy and ignorance, which is the price we pay for segregation. That’s what segregation means.… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“I cannot accept the proposition that the four-hundred-year travail of the American Negro should result merely in his attainment of the present… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“The real reason that nonviolence is considered to be a virtue in Negroes— I am not speaking now of its racial value,… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“The paradox—and a fearful paradox it is—is that the American Negro can have no future anywhere, on any continent, as long as… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“White Americans find it as difficult as white people elsewhere do to divest themselves of the notion that they are in possession… — 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
“The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“I can conceive of no Negro native to this country who has not, by the age of puberty, been irreparably scarred by… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“I don't give a damn if there's any hope for them or not. But I know that I am not about to… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Yes, it does indeed mean something—something unspeakable—to be born, in a white country, an Anglo-Teutonic, antisexual country, black. You very soon, without… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other,… — 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 Copy Share Image
“Elijah Muhammad himself has now been carrrying the same message for more than thirty years; he is not an overnight sensation, and… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are eager… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“You don’t know, and there’s no way in the world for you to find out, what it’s like to be a black… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Americans are as unlike any other white people in the world as it is possible to be. I do not think, for… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“The projects in Harlem are hated. They are hated almost as much as policemen, and this is saying a great deal. And… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“One would never defeat one's circumstances by working and saving one's pennies; one would never, by working, acquire that many pennies, and,… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Yet, if the American Negro has arrived at his identity by virtue of the absoluteness of his estrangement from his past, American… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“In any case, white people, who had robbed black people of their liberty and who profited by this theft every hour that they lived,… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live, and have lived here, are so ugly… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“All cultures have, furthermore, an economic, social, and political base, and no culture can continue to live if its political destiny is not in… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“I remembered that life in that room seemed to be occuring beneath the sea, time flowed past indiffrently above us, hours and days had… — James Baldwin 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 Copy Share Image
“Perhaps now, though, he had hit bottom. One thing about the bottom, he told himself, you can't fall any further. He tried to take… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“What kind of friendship have you had? Or for that matter...what kind of love affairs?” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“Every society is really governed by hidden laws, by unspoken but profound assumptions on the part of the people, and ours is no exception.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“In those days my mother was given to the exasperating and mysterious habit of having babies.” — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“He was suggesting that all Negroes were held in a state of supreme tension between the difficult, dangerous relationship in which they stood to… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
“In the beginning—and neither can this be overstated—a Negro just cannot believe that white people are treating him as they do; he does not… — James Baldwin Copy Share Image
