Perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.
JAMES BALDWINPerhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.
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 BALDWINGenerations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.
JAMES BALDWINColour is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.
JAMES BALDWINWhoever debases others is debasing himself.
JAMES BALDWINEveryone 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 BALDWINNeither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.
JAMES BALDWINHatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
JAMES BALDWINThe role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.
JAMES BALDWINNot everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
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 BALDWINFor these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.
JAMES BALDWINAny real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
JAMES BALDWINAll I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
JAMES BALDWINThe world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.
JAMES BALDWINThe price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
JAMES BALDWIN