I must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. . . . I know the spiritual wasteland to which that road leads . . . whoever debases others is debasing himself.
JAMES A. BALDWINYou write in order to change the world.
More James A. Baldwin Quotes
-
-
You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
Rage can only with difficulty, and never entirely, be brought under the domination of the intelligence, and therefore is not susceptible to any arguments whatsoever.
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
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, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
A man’s balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
The writer’s greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
Be careful what you set your heart upon – for it will surely be yours.
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
The purpose of education…is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
There is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one–you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at themercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you.
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
The real victim of bigotry is the white man who hides his weakness under his myth of superiority.
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.
JAMES A. BALDWIN -
The male cannot bear very much humiliation; and he really cannot bear it, it obliterates him.
JAMES A. BALDWIN