James Baldwin - Freedom Quotes

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Words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.

James Baldwin
Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.

James Baldwin
Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be.

James Baldwin
Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real.

James Baldwin
Passion is not friendly. It is arrogant, superbly contemptuous of all that is not itself, and, as they very definition of passion implies the impulse to freedom, it has a might intimidiating power. It contains a challenge. It contains an unspeakable hope.

James Baldwin
For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

James Baldwin
Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievements must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person.

James Baldwin
If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving. And, after all, one can give freedom only be setting someone free.

James Baldwin