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James A. Baldwin Quotes - Page 5

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American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

James A. Baldwin
Beautiful, Literature, American History
"James Baldwin’s Lesson for Teachers in a Time of Turmoil" by Clint Smith, www.newyorker.com. September 23, 2017.

To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.

James A. Baldwin
Past, Clay, Cracks
"Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James A. Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

James A. Baldwin
Heart, Evil, Imagination
"The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy". "Esquire" Magazine, May 1961.

There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.

James A. Baldwin
Funny, Uplifting, Baby

White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this - which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never - the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.

James A. Baldwin
White, People, And Love
"Letter from a Region of My Mind". The New Yorker, November 17, 1962.

You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world... The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way... people look at reality, then you can change it.

James A. Baldwin
Change, Writing, Reality
"Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

James A. Baldwin
Literature, Habit, Live By

The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

James A. Baldwin
Knowledge, Science, Government
"Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1961.

Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal.

James A. Baldwin
Two, Way, Allegiance

It is dangerous to be an American Negro male. America has never wanted its Negroes to be men, and does not, generally, treat them as men. It treats them as mascots, pets, or things.

James A. Baldwin
Men, America, Pet

There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.

James A. Baldwin
People, World, Process

Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it's true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.

James A. Baldwin
Dark, Artist, Safety
"Conversations With James Baldwin". Book by James Baldwin, 1989.

We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them -- to try to understand what you have done, why you have done it. That way, you can begin to forgive yourself. That's very important. If you don't forgive yourself you'll never be able to forgive anybody else and you'll go on committing the same crimes forever.

James A. Baldwin
Lying, Forever, Forgiving

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 A. Baldwin
Inspirational, Change, Karma
"No Name in the Street". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1972.

I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright.

James A. Baldwin
Country, Moving, Thinking
"Autobiographical Notes" by James A. Baldwin (1952), republished in James A. Baldwin "Notes of a Native Son" (1955), archive.nytimes.com.

If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, fire next time.

James A. Baldwin
Song, Time, Fire
"Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

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. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free - he has set himself free - for higher dreams, for greater privileges.

James A. Baldwin
Breakup, Dream, Real
"Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1961.

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.

James A. Baldwin
Eye, Reality, Long
"Black Body: Rereading James Baldwin's 'Stranger in the Village'" by Teju Cole, www.newyorker.com. August 19, 2014.

Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.

James A. Baldwin
Change, Self, Giving
"The Devil Finds Work". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1976.

To be born in a free society and not to be born free is to be born into a lie. To be told by co-citizens and co-Christians that you have no value, no history, have never done anything that is worthy of human respect destroys you because in the beginning you believe it.

James A. Baldwin
Christian, Lying, Believe

When the white man came to Africa, the white man had the Bible and the African had the land, but now it is the white man who is being, reluctantly and bloodily, separated from the land, and the African who is still attempting to digest or to vomit up the Bible.

James A. Baldwin
Men, White Man, Land
"Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James A. Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

James A. Baldwin
Home, Irrevocable, Conditions
"Giovanni's Room". Book by James A. Baldwin (Part 2), www.newyorker.com. 1956.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

James A. Baldwin
Power, Morality, Subtle

I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

James A. Baldwin
Inspirational, Positive, Motivational Sports

It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death-- ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.

James A. Baldwin
Passion, Darkness, Sake
"Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

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