100+ James Baldwin Quotes | Minimalist Quotes

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
JAMES BALDWIN

Deal Fear Hate Imagination Pain People Reason
Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.
JAMES BALDWIN

Deakness Deep Healing Life Walk Whistle
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

Freedom Independence Liberty Patriotism People
People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
JAMES BALDWIN

Light People Treat Trust
For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
JAMES BALDWIN

Freedom Independence One Liner Unbearable
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

Bread Float Human People Poison Surprise Water
The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
JAMES BALDWIN

Cease Each Other Hold Light Moments Sea
The impossible is the least that one can demand.
JAMES BALDWIN

Demand Hustle Impossible Inspirational One Liner
Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
JAMES BALDWIN

Born Change Inspirational Shock State
You write in order to change the world, if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.
JAMES BALDWIN

Change People Reality World Writing
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

Believe Deserve Desire Dreamss Event Love Wish
Any 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 BALDWIN

Breakup World Change Identity Real Safety
I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.
JAMES BALDWIN

Book One Liner Wonder World
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique.
JAMES BALDWIN

Art Confession Oblique One Liner
The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.
JAMES BALDWIN

Acceptance Black Black Lives Matter Power Refuse White World
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
JAMES BALDWIN

Broken Heart Heart History Pain Read Thinking World
There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.
JAMES BALDWIN

Absolute Desolation Fear One Liner Splendor
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also so much more than that. So are we all.
JAMES BALDWIN

Circumstances History Myself Time
Youth must be the worst time in anybody’s life.
JAMES BALDWIN

Humour One Liner Reality Time Worst Youth
It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
JAMES BALDWIN

Distrustful Education Freedom Impossible Independence Mind Person
People don’t have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love.
JAMES BALDWIN

Disappointment Hurt Limb Love Mercy People
People 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 BALDWIN

Allow Lead Life Live Pay People
For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.
JAMES BALDWIN

Children Inspirational Pay Profit
Artists are here to disturb the peace.
JAMES BALDWIN

Art Artist Disturb One Liner Peace
The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
JAMES BALDWIN

Art Hide Purpose
People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.
JAMES BALDWIN

Believe Cheat Destiny Master People Strong
No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
JAMES BALDWIN

DAngry Heart Imagination Purity

James Baldwin Quotes

Famous Novelist