Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
JAMES BALDWINNot everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
JAMES BALDWINPerhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.
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 BALDWINIt is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
JAMES BALDWINMost of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.
JAMES BALDWINThe world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.
JAMES BALDWINAll art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique.
JAMES BALDWINFor these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.
JAMES BALDWINThe power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.
JAMES BALDWINEverybody’s journey is individual.
JAMES BALDWINI often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.
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 BALDWINYou were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.
JAMES BALDWINPeople can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
JAMES BALDWINThere are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.
JAMES BALDWINIt is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
JAMES BALDWIN