James A. Baldwin Quotes - 9quotes.com

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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.
Written by James A. Baldwin
Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
Written 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.
Written 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.
Written by James A. Baldwin
People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
Written 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.
Written 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.
Written by James A. Baldwin
Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.
Written by James A. Baldwin
Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.
Written by James A. Baldwin
The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.
Written 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.
Written by James A. Baldwin
I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.
Written by James A. Baldwin
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
Written 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.
Written by James A. Baldwin
To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.
Written by James A. Baldwin
It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
Written by James A. Baldwin
The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.
Written by James A. Baldwin
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.
Written by James A. Baldwin
Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.
Written by James A. Baldwin
Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
Written by James A. Baldwin
I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
Written by James A. Baldwin
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
Written by James A. Baldwin
There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
Written 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.
Written by James A. Baldwin
No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.
Written 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.
Written by James A. Baldwin
The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.
Written by James A. Baldwin
The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
Written 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.
Written 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.
Written by James A. Baldwin

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