Know more about James Baldwin.
1. “Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity.” -James Baldwin
2. “I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.” -James Baldwin
3. “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.” -James Baldwin
4. “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 Baldwin
5. “If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not.” -James Baldwin
6. “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” -James Baldwin
7. “Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.” -James Baldwin
8. “The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.” -James Baldwin
9. “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” -James Baldwin
10. “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” -James Baldwin
11. “Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.” -James Baldwin
12. “Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” -James Baldwin
13. “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” -James Baldwin
14. “People can cry much easier than they can change.” -James Baldwin
15. “Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.” -James Baldwin
16. “Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle. Love is a war. Love is growing up.” -James Baldwin
17. “People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, any more than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say ‘Yes’ to life.” -James Baldwin
18. “A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.” -James Baldwin
19. “You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.” -James Baldwin
20. “Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?” -James Baldwin
21. “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” -James Baldwin
22. “The purpose of education…is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.” -James Baldwin
23. “Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with your society.” -James Baldwin
24. “Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” -James Baldwin
25. “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 Baldwin
26. “One must say Yes to life and embrace it wherever it is found – and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is.” -James Baldwin
27. “Nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.” -James Baldwin
28. “Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.” -James Baldwin
30. “I think people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?” -James Baldwin
31. “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.” -James Baldwin
32. “Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with your society.” -James Baldwin
33. “Our crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it.” -James Baldwin
34. “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 Baldwin
35. “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” -James Baldwin
36. “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” -James Baldwin
37. “The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.” -James Baldwin
38. “Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex. You thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it and thought of other things if you did.” -James Baldwin
39. “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.” -James Baldwin
40. “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving.” -James Baldwin
41. “It is true that two wrongs don’t make a right, as we love to point out to the people we have wronged. But one wrong doesn’t make a right, either.” -James Baldwin
42. “You don’t realize that you’re intelligent until it gets you into trouble.” -James Baldwin
43. “People always seem to band together in accordance to a principle that has nothing to do with love, a principle that releases them from personal responsibility.” -James Baldwin
44. “Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority, but to their inhumanity.” -James Baldwin
45. “The purpose of education, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.” -James Baldwin
46. “I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.” -James Baldwin
47. “Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.” -James Baldwin
48. “You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.” -James Baldwin
49. “The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.” -James Baldwin
50. “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” -James Baldwin
51. “Neither love nor terror makes one blind; indifference makes one blind.” -James Baldwin
52. “There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.” -James Baldwin
53. “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.” -James Baldwin
54. “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” -James Baldwin
55. “You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.” -James Baldwin
56. “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” -James Baldwin
57. “The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.” -James Baldwin
58. “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.” -James Baldwin
59. “Be careful what you set your heart upon – for it will surely be yours.” -James Baldwin
60. “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” -James Baldwin