For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
JAMES BALDWINFor nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
JAMES BALDWINAmerican history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
JAMES BALDWINPeople can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.
JAMES BALDWINThe artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
JAMES BALDWINPeople are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
JAMES BALDWINThe most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
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 BALDWINIf a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe.
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 BALDWINNo one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
JAMES BALDWINGuilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford.
JAMES BALDWINThe moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
JAMES BALDWINFreedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
JAMES BALDWINPeople are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
JAMES BALDWINIt is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.
JAMES BALDWINIf I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
JAMES BALDWIN