Quotes By James A. Baldwin

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

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.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.

A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.

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

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.

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.

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

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.

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.

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

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.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

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.

You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

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.

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

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.