Colour is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.
JAMES BALDWINColour is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.
JAMES BALDWINThe 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 BALDWINPeople pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.
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 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 BALDWINThe place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.
JAMES BALDWINPeople don’t have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love.
JAMES BALDWINEducation is indoctrination if you’re white – subjugation if you’re black.
JAMES BALDWINThose who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.
JAMES BALDWINIf I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
JAMES BALDWINNo man is a devil in his own mind.
JAMES BALDWINLife is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
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 BALDWINPeople can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
JAMES BALDWINTo be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.
JAMES BALDWINTo be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.
JAMES BALDWIN