Love was a country he knew nothing about.
JAMES BALDWINPerhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.
More James Baldwin Quotes
-
-
You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.
JAMES 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 BALDWIN -
There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
JAMES BALDWIN -
All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
JAMES BALDWIN -
It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
JAMES BALDWIN -
We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them.
JAMES BALDWIN -
It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
JAMES BALDWIN -
People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.
JAMES BALDWIN -
The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
JAMES BALDWIN -
Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
JAMES BALDWIN -
There 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 BALDWIN -
I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
JAMES BALDWIN -
Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
JAMES BALDWIN -
There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.
JAMES BALDWIN -
Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.
JAMES BALDWIN