All James A. Baldwin Quotes
- To defend oneself against a fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced. Conquered
- It is said that the camera cannot lie, but rarely do we allow it to do anything else, since the camera sees what you point… Allow
- A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching. Always Shifting
- People can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street. Change
- There is something terribly radical about believing that one's own experience and images are important enough to speak about, much less to write about and… Believe
- The past is what makes the present coherent, and the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly. Assess
- And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time, and furthermore, to win. Battle
- When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you… Don T
- I will no longer take anyone's word for my experience. Experience
- A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control… All
- Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or… Ability
- The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of… American
- It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless. Doe
- The greatest significance of the present student generation is that it is through them that the point of view of the subjugated is finally and… Expressed
- Europe has what we [Americans] do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of… Americans
- What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. America
- To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage. African American
- An American Negro, however deep his sympathies, or however bright his rage, ceases to be simply a black man when he faces a black man… Africa
- There was no room in God's army for the coward heart, no crown awaiting him who put mother or father, sister or brother, sweetheart or… Amen
- A ghetto can be improved in one way only: out of existence. Cities
- Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always seem untimely. Always Seem
- It seems to be typical of life in America ... that the second generation has no time to talk to the first. America
- In the invincible and indescribable squalor of Harlem ... I was tormented. I felt caged, like an animal. I wanted to escape. I felt if… Animal
- ... every human being is an unprecedented miracle. Every Human
- Negro servants have been smuggling odds and ends out of white homes for generations, and white people have been delighted to have them do it,… Assuaged