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
The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him. – James Baldwin
No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time. – 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. – James A. Baldwin
If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not. – James 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. – James A. Baldwin
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. – James A. Baldwin
There is a ‘sanctity’ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it. – 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. – James A. Baldwin
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. – 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. – James A. Baldwin
It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian. – James Baldwin
The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly. – James Baldwin
I’ve always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative. – 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. – James A. Baldwin
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. – James A. Baldwin