« All From Quotes · James A. Baldwin's Page
From Quotes by James A. Baldwin
- Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
- To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that…
- The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did…
- There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes…
- Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization of ourselves; the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for…
- Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of…
- 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…
- Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.
- People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be…
- If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God…
- If the word integration means anything, this is what it means that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are,…
- 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…
- James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in…
- One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.
- Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.
- In overlooking, denying, evading this complexity--which is nothing more than the disquieting complexity of ourselves--we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of…
- Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to…
- People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by…
- In my case, I think my exile saved my life, for it inexorably confirmed something which Americans appear to have great difficulty accepting. Which is,…
- All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within,…
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