The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
JAMES BALDWINIf a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe.
More James Baldwin Quotes
-
-
Youth must be the worst time in anybody’s life.
JAMES BALDWIN -
Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.
JAMES BALDWIN -
Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.
JAMES BALDWIN -
Whoever debases others is debasing himself.
JAMES BALDWIN -
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.
JAMES BALDWIN -
I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
JAMES BALDWIN -
The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.
JAMES BALDWIN -
You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.
JAMES BALDWIN -
The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.
JAMES BALDWIN -
Everybody’s journey is individual.
JAMES BALDWIN -
People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.
JAMES BALDWIN -
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
JAMES BALDWIN -
It is easy to proclaim all souls equal in the sight of God; it is hard to make men equal on earth in the sight of men.
JAMES BALDWIN -
If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
JAMES BALDWIN -
Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
JAMES BALDWIN






