I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
JAMES BALDWINI want to be an honest man and a good writer.
JAMES BALDWINEducation is indoctrination if you’re white – subjugation if you’re black.
JAMES BALDWINThere are people in the world for whom “coming along” is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.
JAMES BALDWINThe place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.
JAMES BALDWINThe moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
JAMES BALDWINYou were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.
JAMES BALDWINHistory is not a procession of illustrious people. It’s about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.
JAMES BALDWINNo one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
JAMES BALDWINGuilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford.
JAMES BALDWINI often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.
JAMES BALDWINChildren have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
JAMES BALDWINTrue rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one’s life.
JAMES BALDWINPlease try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity.
JAMES BALDWINTrust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
JAMES BALDWINNo man is a devil in his own mind.
JAMES BALDWINIf you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person.
JAMES BALDWIN