All James A. Baldwin Quotes
The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.
James A. Baldwin
48% of people like this quote
No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.
James A. Baldwin
47% of people like this quote
Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
James A. Baldwin
47% of people like this quote
Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
James A. Baldwin
47% of people like this quote
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.
James A. Baldwin
47% of people like this quote
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.
James A. Baldwin
47% of people like this quote
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
46% of people like this quote
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.
James A. Baldwin
46% of people like this quote
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.
James A. Baldwin
46% of people like this quote
Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.
James A. Baldwin
46% of people like this quote
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.
James A. Baldwin
45% of people like this quote
Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
James A. Baldwin
44% of people like this quote
Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
James A. Baldwin
44% of people like this quote
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