QUOTES by James A. Baldwin
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"Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?"
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"The paradox of education is precisely this; that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"Be careful what you set your heart upon -- for it will surely be yours."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"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."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an immediate knowledge of its ugly side."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"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."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"Life 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."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"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."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"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."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"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."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"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."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did--which was to hide."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up"
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses"
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck -- but, most of all, endurance."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin
"Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the battle field."
Quote by -James A. Baldwin