All James A. Baldwin Quotes
- He may be a very nice man. But I haven't got the time to figure that out. All I know is, he's got a uniform… All
- The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and… Bombs
- It is a terrible, an inexorable law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own: in the face of one's victim,… Another Without
- I am aware that no man is a villain in his own eyes. Aware
- The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him. Excavate
- Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always be seen… Always Shifting
- Writing is a political instrument. Inspirational
- At four o'clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen. Clock
- The American ideal of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal of masculinity. This idea has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and… Act
- Then I buckled up my shoes, and I started. Buckled
- If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they're real… Certain
- We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are,… Cannot Discuss
- Fonny and I just sat there... while the voices of the congregation rose and rose around us, without mercy... Teddy had the tambourine, and gave… Attacked
- She was twenty and had come to realize that, though she had a voice, she wasn't a singer; that to endure and embrace the life… Demand
- It was as though we were a picture, trapped in time: this had been happening for hundreds of years, people sitting in a room, waiting… Been
- The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now. Always Now
- Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self, in which case, it is best that the garment… All
- You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world...… According
- When the white man came to Africa, the white man had the Bible and the African had the land, but now it is the white… Africa
- Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. Bitter