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Time Quotes by James Baldwin

38 Time quotes by James Baldwin

All Time quotes James Baldwin’s page

Life in that room seemed to be occurring beneath the sea, while time flowed indifferent above, making hours and days feel meaningless. The quotes warn that societies often refuse to look back, yet personal moments of pain and forgiveness can lock a person in a room of memory. They also call out crimes that time and history will never forgive.

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“this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history…

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“It seems to be typical of life in America, where opportunities, real and fancied, are thicker than anywhere else on the globe,…

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“this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history…

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“I remembered that life in that room seemed to be occuring beneath the sea, time flowed past indiffrently above us, hours and…

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“To accept one's past - one's history - is not the same things as drowning in it. An invented past can never…

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“The salvation of America lies in whether or not it is able to embrace the black face. If it cannot do that,…

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“Then I wanted to beg him to forgive me. But this would have been too great a confession; any yielding at that…

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“if you’ve loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man, you gain a strange…

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“When he was dead I realized that I had hardly ever spoken to him. When he had been dead a long time…

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“Why no," he said, reasonably, and looked at his watch, "we can wait another hour if you like. We can become friends…

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“We spend vast amounts of our time an emotional energy in learning how not to be natural and in eluding the trap…

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“And they didn't even read; depressed populations don't have the time or energy to spare. The affluent populations, which should have been…

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“while the excluded begin to realize, having endured everything, that they can endure everything. They do not know the precise shape of…

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“I know what I'm asking is impossible. But in our time, as in every time, the impossible is the least that one…

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“Now, one hears from a long time ago that "white is merely a state of mind." I add to that, white is…

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“In the context of the Negro problem neither whites nor blacks, for excellent reasons of their own, have the faintest desire to…

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“The summer ended. Day by day, and taking its time, the summer ended. The noises in the street began to change, diminish,…

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“The paradox—and a fearful paradox it is—is that the American Negro can have no future anywhere, on any continent, as long as…

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“The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new…

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“Until i die there will be these moments, moments seeming to rise up out of the ground like Macbeth's witches, when his…

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“You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other…

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“And this was perhaps the first time in my life that death occurred to me as a reality. I thought of the…

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“If one wishes to be instructed--not that anyone does--concerning the treacherous role that memory plays in a human life, consider how relentlessly…

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“This was the last time I ever saw my mother alive. Just the same, this picture gets all mixed up in my…

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“Why am I going home? he asked himself. But he knew why. It was time. In order not to lose all that…

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“And his mind could not contain the terrible stretch of time that united twelve men fishing by the shores of Galilee, and…

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“All for the first time, in the days when acts had no consequences and nothing was irrecoverable, and love was simple and…

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“Not only was I not born to be a slave: I was not born to hope to become the equal of the…

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“And yet - when one begins to search for the crucial, the definitive moment, the moment which changed all others, one finds…

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“Time: the word tolled like the bells of a church. Fonny was doing: time. In six months time, our baby would be…

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“He stood for a moment on the melting snow, distracted, and then began to run down the hill, feeling himself fly as…

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“I smiled and I really felt at that moment that Judas and the Savior had met in me. [...] And yet even…

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“I remember that life in that room seemed to be occurring beneath the sea, time flowed past indifferently above us, hours and…

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“The baby was restless, and I was scared. It was almost time. I was so tired, I almost wanted to die. For…

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“What the times demand, and in an unprecedented fashion, is that one be—not seem—outrageous, independent, anarchical. That one be thoroughly disciplined—as a…

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“To Americans, time always sounds like a parade chez vous [at your house], a triumphant parade, like armies with banners entering a…

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“when the black populations of the world have a future, so will the Western nations have a future-and not till then. But…

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“What are you doing all the time? And why do you say nothing? You are evil, you know, and sometimes when you…

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More by James Baldwin

“In any case, white people, who had robbed black people of their liberty and who profited by this theft every hour that they lived,…

“The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live, and have lived here, are so ugly…

“All cultures have, furthermore, an economic, social, and political base, and no culture can continue to live if its political destiny is not in…

“I remembered that life in that room seemed to be occuring beneath the sea, time flowed past indiffrently above us, hours and days had…

“No. It would help if I were able to feel guilty.But the end of innocence is also the end of guilt”

“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…

“What kind of friendship have you had? Or for that matter...what kind of love affairs?”

“For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.”

“Every society is really governed by hidden laws, by unspoken but profound assumptions on the part of the people, and ours is no exception.”

“In those days my mother was given to the exasperating and mysterious habit of having babies.”

“He was suggesting that all Negroes were held in a state of supreme tension between the difficult, dangerous relationship in which they stood to…

“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…

“If the world wasn't so full of dead folks maybe those of us that's trying to live wouldn't have to suffer so bad.”

“I am very much concerned that American Negroes achieve their freedom here in the United States. But I am also concerned for their dignity,…

“The paradox—and a fearful paradox it is—is that the American Negro can have no future anywhere, on any continent, as long as he is…