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James A. Baldwin Quotes - Page 3

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I'm not interested in anybody's guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn't do it, and I didn't do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and

I'm not interested in anybody's guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn't do it, and I didn't do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason... Anyone who is trying to be conscious must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we've used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are.

James A. Baldwin
Country, Lying, Responsibility

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

James A. Baldwin
Life, Happiness, Success
"Collected Essays, Vol. 2". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1998.

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

James A. Baldwin
Life, Change, Needs
"James Baldwin: My Uncle and His Love Life" by T. Better Baldwin, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 30, 2014.

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 A. Baldwin
Inspirational, Freedom, Government
Nobody Knows My Name (1961) "Notes for a Hypothetical Novel"

I think that the inability to love is the central problem, because that inability masks a certain terror, and that terror is the terror of being touched. And if you can't be touched, you can't be changed. And if you can't be changed, you can't be alive.

James A. Baldwin
Love Is, Thinking, Inability To Love

We should certainly know by now that it is one thing to overthrow a dictator or repel an invader and quite another thing really to achieve a revolution. Time and time and time again, the people discover that they have merely betrayed themselves into the hands of yet another Pharaoh, who, since he was necessary to put the broken country together, will not let them go.

James A. Baldwin
Country, Hands, People
"Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James A. Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.

James A. Baldwin
Thinking, Experience, Knows
"Some Blues for Mr. Charlie: Obama’s Moment of Truth" by Rev. Peter Laarman, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 21, 2008.

I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others.

James A. Baldwin
Mean, Facts, Liberation
"In Search of a Majority". James A. Baldwin's address at Kalamazoo College in Michigan (February 1960), as quoted in James A. Baldwin "Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son", July 1961.

What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free.

James A. Baldwin
Country, Believe, Hero

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.

James A. Baldwin
Pain, Thinking, Empathy
"Doom and glory of knowing who you are". "LIFE" Magazine, Vol. 54, No. 21, (p. 89), May 24, 1963.

God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead.

James A. Baldwin
Book, Voice

The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can. And if one despairs-- as who has not?-- of human love, God's love alone is left.

James A. Baldwin
Stars, Flower, Moon
"Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.

James A. Baldwin
Happiness, Lying, Discipline
The Paris Review Interview (Issues 91-94, p. 77), 1984.

It comes as a great shock…to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance…has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, and although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you.

James A. Baldwin
Flags, Killing, Shock
Speech at Cambridge University, 17 Feb. 1965, in New York Times Magazine 7 March 1965, p. 32

This is the charged, the dangerous moment, when everything must be re-examined, must be made new, when nothing at all can be taken for granted.

James A. Baldwin
Taken, Moments, Granted

Recognizing a problem doesn't always bring a solution, but until we recognize that problem, there can be no solution.

James A. Baldwin
Forgiveness, Problem, Recognizing

Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.

James A. Baldwin
Heart, Answers

People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy.

James A. Baldwin
Character, Names, People

Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.

James A. Baldwin
Inspirational, Life, War
"Breaking Into James Baldwin's House" by Thomas Chatterton Williams, www.newyorker.com. October 28, 2015.

There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.

James A. Baldwin
Ideas, People, Wish
"Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.

James A. Baldwin
Intelligent, Realizing, Trouble
"James Baldwin: Reflections of a Maverick". Interview with Julius Lester, The New York Times, May 27, 1984.

People can cry much easier than they can change.

James A. Baldwin
Change, People, Self Improvement
"James Baldwin Back Home" by Robert Coles, archive.nytimes.com. July 31, 1977.

In order to have a conversation with someone you must reveal yourself.

James A. Baldwin
Order, Justice, Diversity

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 A. Baldwin
Life, Strong, Believe

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

James A. Baldwin
Book, Writing, People
The New York Times, June 1, 1964.

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