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James A. Baldwin Quotes - Page 14

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Yet I also suspected that what I was seeing was but a part of the truth and perhaps not even the most important part; beneath these faces, these clothes, accents, rudenesses, was power and sorrow, both unadmitted,

Yet I also suspected that what I was seeing was but a part of the truth and perhaps not even the most important part; beneath these faces, these clothes, accents, rudenesses, was power and sorrow, both unadmitted, unrealized, the power of inventors, the sorrow of the disconnected.

James A. Baldwin
Clothes, Sorrow, Important

In order for this to happen, your entire frame of reference will have to change, and you will be forced to surrender many things that you now scarcely know you have.

James A. Baldwin
Order, Surrender, Frame Of Reference
"Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James A. Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]

James A. Baldwin
Gratitude, Pain, Thinking

The moral authority in the Western world is gone. And it is gone forever. It is gone, not because of the criminal record--everybody's record is criminal. It is gone because you cannot do one thing and pretend you're doing another! None of us, who are sitting around in some of the true limbo out-of-space, which we call "now," waiting to be saved, civilized, or discovered, have the moral authority to say anything.

James A. Baldwin
Space, Waiting, Forever

I am certainly convinced that it is one of the greatest impulses of mankind to arrive at something higher than a natural state.

James A. Baldwin
Destiny, Natural, States

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

James A. Baldwin
Beautiful, People, Ugly

I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it--it, the physical act. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine.

James A. Baldwin
Sleep, Rivers, People

Heavenly witnesses are a tricky lot, to be used by whoever is closest to Heaven at the time. And legend and theology, which are designed to sanctify our fears, crimes, and aspirations, also reveal them for what they are.

James A. Baldwin
Heaven, Legends, Crime
"Letter from a Region in My Mind". www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

You go into a book and you're in the dark, really. You go in with a certain fear and trembling. You know one thing. You know you will not be the same person when this voyage is over. But you don't know what's going to happen to you between getting on the boat and stepping off.

James A. Baldwin
Book, Dark, Voyages

Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?" "Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel." "And when you have waited—-has it made you sure?

James A. Baldwin
Order, People, Waiting

An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger.

James A. Baldwin
Fall, Identity, Stranger

A ghetto can be improved in one way only: out of existence.

James A. Baldwin
Ghetto, Cities, Way
"Fifth Avenue, Uptown" by James A. Baldwin, www.esquire.com. October 16, 2007.

To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.

James A. Baldwin
Identity, Way, Achieve

It seems to be typical of life in America ... that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.

James A. Baldwin
America, Typical, Generations
1955 Notes of a Native Son,'Notes of a Native Son'.

All of Africa will be free before we can get a lousy cup of coffee.

James A. Baldwin
Coffee, Cups, Coffee Cup
"A Negro Assays on the Negro Mood" by James A. Baldwin, The New York Times (March 12, 1961), later published as "East River, Downtown: Postscript to a Letter from Harlem" in James A. Baldwin "Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son", July 1961.

People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.

James A. Baldwin
Mean, Hands, Roots
"Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White" by James A. Baldwin, archive.nytimes.com. April 9, 1967.

It was as though we were a picture, trapped in time: this had been happening for hundreds of years, people sitting in a room, waiting for dinner, and listening to the blues.

James A. Baldwin
Music, Years, People

You're getting to be a big boy,' I said desperately, 'it's time you started thinking about your future.' 'I'm thinking about my future,' said Sonny, grimly. 'I think about it all the time.

James A. Baldwin
Boys, Thinking, Bigs

James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them.

James A. Baldwin
People, History, May

Years ago, when he was around fourteen, he'd been all hipped on the idea of going to India. He read books about people sitting on rocks, naked, in all kinds of weather, but mostly bad, naturally, and walking barefoot through hot coals and arriving at wisdom. I used to say that it sounded to me as though they were getting away from wisdom as fast as they could. I think he sort of looked down on me for that.

James A. Baldwin
Book, Thinking, Rocks

All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.

James A. Baldwin
Girl, Boys, Maturity
"The Harlem Ghetto" by James A. Baldwin in "Commentary", February 1948, republished in James A. Baldwin "Notes of a Native Son", 1955.

If I could make you stay, I would,’ he shouted. ‘If I had to beat you, chain you, starve you—if I could make you stay, I would.’ He turned back into the room; the wind blew his hair. He shook his finger at me, grotesquely playful. ‘One day, perhaps, you will wish I had.

James A. Baldwin
Hair, Wind, Wish

I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change, who can teach-or people like myself, if I may say so, who are not afraid to eat a lobster alone as they take on their shoulders the monumental weight of thirty years

James A. Baldwin
Years, People, Lobster

We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have a sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be.

James A. Baldwin
Goal, Minorities, Who We Are
"Gay Rights Speech: What Should Obama Say Tonight?" by Jose Antonio Vargas, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 18, 2010.

My friend was about to introduce me when she looked at me and smiled and said, "Whose little boy are you?"

James A. Baldwin
Boys, African American, Littles
"Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James A. Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

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