3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 James A. Baldwin Education is indoctrination if you’re white – subjugation if you’re black.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 James A. Baldwin It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 James A. Baldwin I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 James A. Baldwin Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
3 December 2020 James A. Baldwin Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 James A. Baldwin The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 James A. Baldwin The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.
3 December 2020 James A. Baldwin Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
3 December 2020 James A. Baldwin American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
3 December 2020 James A. Baldwin The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 James A. Baldwin I’ve always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.
3 December 2020 James A. Baldwin The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
3 December 2020 James A. Baldwin No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 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.
