black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

… every human being is an unprecedented miracle.

James A. Baldwin

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Change Life Needs
And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Sky Trouble World
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. BALDWIN

Done May People Spiritual
I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Believe Inspirational People
Hatred destroys the person who hates.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Hate Hatred Person
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.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Blessing Future Time
You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Goal Want Writing
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

Greed Needs Writing
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

Beats Blood Way
Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Art Important Life
To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Clay Crack Past
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Country Made People Philanthropy
A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Children Education Teacher
You write in order to change the world.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Order World Writing
The male cannot bear very much humiliation; and he really cannot bear it, it obliterates him.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Bear Humiliation Male
It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
JAMES A. BALDWIN

Mirror Order People

… every human being is an unprecedented miracle.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

… every human being is an unprecedented miracle.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More James A. Baldwin Quotes