James Baldwin quotes

It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

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

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

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

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.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

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.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

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 - which was to hide.

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

Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?

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

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

People can cry much easier than they can change.

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

No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

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.

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 making of bread.

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.

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.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.

Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

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

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

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.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

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

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

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

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

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.