Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. – James A. Baldwin
It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. – James A. Baldwin
The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in. – James A. Baldwin
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. – 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. – James A. Baldwin
Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. – 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. – James A. Baldwin
Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law. – 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. – James A. Baldwin
A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled. – 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. – 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. – James A. Baldwin
Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable. – James A. Baldwin
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. – 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. – 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. – 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. – 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. – 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. – James A. Baldwin
The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions. – James A. Baldwin
American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it. – James A. Baldwin
It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind. – James A. Baldwin
The writer’s greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all. – James A. Baldwin
