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 21 till 40 of 120.

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  • Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?
    The Fire Next Time (1963)
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Employment is my right my destiny.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Europe has what we [Americans] do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Everything in life depends on how that life accepts its limits.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Experience is a private, and a very largely speechless affair.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Experience that destroys innocents also leads one back to it.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • 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 Baldwin
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  • Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • He may be a very nice man. But I haven't got the time to figure that out. All I know is, he's got a uniform and a gun and I have to relate to him that way. That's the only way to relate to him because one of us may have to die.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • I am aware that no man is a villain in his own eyes.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • I am certainly convinced that it is one of the greatest impulses of mankind to arrive at something higher than a natural state.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • I can't be a pessimist, because I am alive.
    Doom and glory of knowing who you are
    ― James Baldwin
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  • I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • I really do believe in the New Jerusalem. I really do believe that we can all become better than we are. I know we can. But the price is enormous and people are not yet willing to pay it.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • I think white gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, in a society in which they were supposed to be safe. The anomaly of their sexuality puts them in danger, unexpectedly.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • If all you want to do is make money, the very last thing you need is imagination.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • 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 Baldwin
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  • If you really want to know something about solitude, become famous.
    ― James Baldwin
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