To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.
JAMES BALDWINTo be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.
JAMES BALDWINFor these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.
JAMES BALDWINPeople can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
JAMES BALDWINThe world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.
JAMES BALDWINI want to be an honest man and a good writer.
JAMES BALDWINThe purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
JAMES BALDWINNeither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.
JAMES BALDWINIt is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
JAMES BALDWINIt 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 BALDWINNothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
JAMES BALDWINLove brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don’t panic now.
JAMES BALDWINThere are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.
JAMES BALDWINPeople are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
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 BALDWINNakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.
JAMES BALDWINThe 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.
JAMES BALDWIN