Quotes by James Baldwin

James Baldwin

James Baldwin

American writer

Lived from: 1924 - 1987

Category: Writers (Contemporary) Country: FlagUnited States

Born: 2 august 1924 Died: 1 december 1987

Quotes 1 till 20 of 120.

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  • Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the battle field.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
    Source: Nobody Knows My Name (1961)
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty - necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an immediate knowledge of its ugly side.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • A devotion to humanity is... too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • A man's balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • A platitude is simply a truth repeated till people get tired of hearing it.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So-Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • All art is a kind of confession.
    Source: Nobody Knows My Name (1961)
    ― James Baldwin
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  • 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 Baldwin
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  • Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Anyone who has struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • 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
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  • Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Color is not a human or a personal reality it is a political reality.
    ― James Baldwin
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