James A. Baldwin Quotes & Sayings

There are, forever, swamps to be drained, cities to be created, mines to be exploited, children to be fed ... But the conquest of the physical world is not man's only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through vast forests, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place. — James A. Baldwin

To defend oneself against a fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced. — James A. Baldwin

A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven. — James A. Baldwin

One writes out of one thing only-one's own experience, — James A. Baldwin

Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves. — James A. Baldwin

She was twenty and had come to realize that, though she had a voice, she wasn't a singer; that to endure and embrace the life of a singer demands a whole lot more than a voice. — James A. Baldwin

The determination to outwit one's situation means that one has no models, only object lessons. — James A. Baldwin

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

Each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other-male in female, female in male, white in black, and black in white. We are part of each other. Many of my countrymen appear to find this fact exceedingly inconvenient and even unfair, and so, very often, do I. But none of us can do anything about it. — James A. Baldwin

Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? — James A. Baldwin

The greatest significance of the present student generation is that it is through them that the point of view of the subjugated is finally and inexorably being expressed. — James A. Baldwin

Negro servants have been smuggling odds and ends out of white homes for generations, and white people have been delighted to have them do it, because it has assuaged a dim guilt and testified to the intrinsic superiority of white people. — James A. Baldwin

All of Africa will be free before we can get a lousy cup of coffee. — James A. Baldwin

If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving. And, after all, one can give freedom only be setting someone free. — James A. Baldwin

We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it. — James A. Baldwin

If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected - those, precisely, who need the law's protection most! - and listens to their testimony. — James A. Baldwin

Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings. — James A. Baldwin

When the book comes out it may hurt you - but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself. — James A. Baldwin

After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So-Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket. — James A. Baldwin

America sometimes resembles, at least from the point of view of a black man, an exceedingly monotonous minstrel show; the same dances, same music, same jokes. One has done (or been) the show so long that one can do it in one's own sleep. — James A. Baldwin

The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white. — James A. Baldwin

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

The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no moral standards in the world at all. — James A. Baldwin

You don't need numbers; you need passion, and this is proven by the history of the world! — James A. Baldwin

Such figures as Boy George do not disturb me nearly so much as do those relentlessly hetero (sexual?) keepers of the keys and seals, those who know what the world needs in the way of order and who are ready and willing to supply that order. — James A. Baldwin

I am aware that no man is a villain in his own eyes. — James A. Baldwin

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. — James A. Baldwin

Love is like the lightning, and your maturity is signaled by the extent to which you can accept the dangers and the power and the beauty of love. — James A. Baldwin

I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself. — James A. Baldwin

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

Rage cannot be hidden, it can only be dissembled. This dissembling deludes the thoughtless, and strengthens rage and adds, to rage, contempt. — James A. Baldwin

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

If the word integration means anything, this is what it means that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it — James A. Baldwin

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love. — James A. Baldwin

I'm beginning to think that maybe everything that happens makes sense. Like, if it didn't make sense, how could it happen? — James A. Baldwin

Everything in life depends on how that life accepts its limits. — James A. Baldwin

I can't be a pessimist, because I am alive. — James A. Baldwin

It is only because the world looks on his talent with such a frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important. — James A. Baldwin

The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now. — James A. Baldwin

Man cannot live by profit alone. — James A. Baldwin

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

Being in the pulpit, was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion worked. — James A. Baldwin

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned. — James A. Baldwin

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

European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition
of intellectual activity, of letters
and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America. — James A. Baldwin

The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross. — 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. — James A. Baldwin

Women manage, quite brilliantly, on the whole, and to stunning and unforeseeable effect, to survive and surmount being defined by others. They dismiss the definition, however dangerous or wounding it may be
or even, sometimes, find a way to utilize it. — James A. Baldwin

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

At bottom, to be colored means that one has been caught in some utterly unbelievable cosmic joke, a joke so hideous and in such bad taste that it defeats all categories and definitions. — James A. Baldwin

Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievements must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person. — James A. Baldwin

The miracle is that some have stepped out of the rags of the Republic's definition to assume the great burden and glory of their humanity and their responsibility for one another. It is an extraordinary achievement to be trapped in the dungeon of color and to dare to shake down its walls and to step out of it leaving the jailkeeper in the rubble. — James A. Baldwin

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living. — James A. Baldwin

I really do believe in the New Jerusalem. I really do believe that we can all become better than we are. I know we can. But the price is enormous and people are not yet willing to pay it. — James A. Baldwin

Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides. — James A. Baldwin

It is said that the camera cannot lie, but rarely do we allow it to do anything else, since the camera sees what you point it at: the camera sees what you want it to see. — 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. — James A. Baldwin

Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours. — James A. Baldwin

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

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

Writing is a political instrument. — James A. Baldwin

To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage. — James A. Baldwin

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

You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal. — James A. Baldwin

Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty - necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels. — James A. Baldwin

When Americans look out on the world, they see nothing but dark and menacing strangers who appear to have no sense of rhythm at all, nor any respect or affection for white people; and white Americans really do not know what to make of all this, except to increase the defense budget. — James A. Baldwin

One day, to everyone's astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up. — James A. Baldwin

It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak. — 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. — James A. Baldwin

There is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one
you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at themercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you. — James A. Baldwin

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

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

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons. — James A. Baldwin

You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you. — James A. Baldwin

The trick is to love somebody ... If you love one person, you see everybody else differently. — James A. Baldwin

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

I think white gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, in a society in which they were supposed to be safe. The anomaly of their sexuality puts them in danger, unexpectedly. — James A. Baldwin

Most people ... find a disorientating mismatch between the long-term nature of their liabilities and the increasingly short-term nature of their assets. — James A. Baldwin

I will no longer take anyone's word for my experience. — James A. Baldwin

Employment is my right my destiny. — James A. Baldwin

Life is more important than art; that's what makes art important. — James A. Baldwin

I started reading. I read everything I could get my hands on ... By the time I was thirteen I had read myself out of Harlem. I had read every book in two libraries and had a card for the Forty-Second Street branch. — James A. Baldwin

Experience is a private, very largely speechless affair. — James A. Baldwin

A man's balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs. — James A. Baldwin

The world's definitions are one thing and the life one actually lives is quite another. One cannot allow oneself, nor one's family, friends, or lovers - to say nothing of one's children - to live according to the world's definitions: one must find a way, perpetually, to be stronger and better than that. — James A. Baldwin

Words like 'freedom', 'justice' and 'democracy' are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous, and above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply. — James A. Baldwin

Every human being is an unprecedented miracle. — James A. Baldwin

An American Negro, however deep his sympathies, or however bright his rage, ceases to be simply a black man when he faces a black man from Africa. — James A. Baldwin

Rage can only with difficulty, and never entirely, be brought under the domination of the intelligence, and therefore is not susceptible to any arguments whatsoever. — James A. Baldwin

In the invincible and indescribable squalor of Harlem ... I was tormented. I felt caged, like an animal. I wanted to escape. I felt if I did not get out I would slowly strangle. — James A. Baldwin

Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it. — James A. Baldwin

Then I buckled up my shoes, and I started. — James A. Baldwin

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

A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. — James A. Baldwin

I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative. — James A. Baldwin

If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you're not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real. — James A. Baldwin

The world tends to trap you in the role you play and it is always extremely hard to maintain a watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is. — James A. Baldwin

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

The male cannot bear very much humiliation; and he really cannot bear it, it obliterates him. — James A. Baldwin

In order to have a conversation with someone you must reveal yourself. — James A. Baldwin