James Baldwin Quotes

246 Sourced Quotes

Even the most incorrigible maverick has to be born somewhere. He may leave the group that produced him-he may be forced to-but nothing will efface his origins, the marks of which he carries with him everywhere. I think it is important to know this and even find it a matter for rejoicing, as the strongest people do, regardless of their station. On this acceptance, literally, the life of a writer depends.

James Baldwin
I do not wish to see Negroes become the equal of their murderers. I wish us to become equal to ourselves. To become a people so free in themselves that they will have no need to—fear— others—and have no need to murder others.

James Baldwin
There is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one--you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at themercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you.

James Baldwin
You don't need numbers; you need passion, and this is proven by the history of the world!

James Baldwin
My face is like a face you have seen many times.

James Baldwin
At bottom, to be colored means that one has been caught in some utterly unbelievable cosmic joke, a joke so hideous and in such bad taste that it defeats all categories and definitions.

James Baldwin
A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.

James Baldwin
It is only because the world looks on his talent with such a frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important.

James Baldwin
To accept one's past—one's history—is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it.

James Baldwin
The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no moral standards in the world at all.

James Baldwin
Every form is difficult, no one is easier than another. They all kick your ass.

James Baldwin
The darkest hour
is just before the dawn,
and that, I see,
which does not guarantee
power to draw the next breath,
nor abolish the suspicion
that the brightest hour
we will ever see
occurs just before we cease
to be.

James Baldwin
We've got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible, because we are still each other's only hope.

James Baldwin
The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.

James Baldwin
I'm optimistic about the future, but not about the future of this civilization. I'm optimistic about the civilization which will replace this one.

James Baldwin
This is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.... It is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.

James Baldwin
Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?

James Baldwin
The wretched of the earth do not decide to become extinct, they resolve, on the contrary, to multiply: life is their weapon against life, life is all that they have.

James Baldwin
The white man, someone told me, discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the Black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.

James Baldwin
When I was very young, and was dealing with my buddies in those wine- and urine-stained hallways, something in me wondered, What will happen to all that beauty? For black people, though I am aware that some of us, black and white, do not know it yet, are very beautiful.

James Baldwin
I'm going to have my baby and I'm going to bring him up to be a man.

James Baldwin
If all you want to do is make money, the very last thing you need is imagination.

James Baldwin
And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time, and furthermore, to win.

James Baldwin
A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees.

James Baldwin
I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life.

James Baldwin
If one can live with one's own pain then one respects the pain of others, and so, briefly, but transcendentally, we can release each other from pain.

James Baldwin
All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.

James Baldwin
This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.

James Baldwin
One day, to everyone's astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.

James Baldwin
I'm beginning to think that maybe everything that happens makes sense. Like, if it didn't make sense, how could it happen?

James Baldwin