James A. Baldwin Quotes

One cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own.

You've got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.

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 one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.

The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.

The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.

The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.

Artists are here to disturb the peace.

There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.

Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel.

Not only was I not born to be a slave; I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees.

The moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.

Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.

The trick is to love somebody.... If you love one person, you see everybody else differently.

And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time, and furthermore, to win.

The interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.

Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.

A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.

True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

To be with God is really to be involved in some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you.

Remember, to hate, to be violent, is demeaning. It means you're afraid of the other side of the coin -- to love and be loved.

The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.

Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a fraud. No other city is so spitefully incoherent.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.

A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.

All art is a kind of confession.

In order to have a conversation with someone you must reveal yourself.

Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal.

There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

Writing is a political instrument.

We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have a sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be.

If you're afraid to die, you will not be able to live.

You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

The future is like heaven-everyone exalts it but no one wants to go there now.

The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

The American ideal is, after all, that everyone should be as much alike as possible.

Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.