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 101 till 120 of 120.

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  • 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 Baldwin
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  • True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers, and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • We can make America what America must become.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have a sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; and yet is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.
    The Fire Next Time (1963)
    ― James Baldwin
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  • When human rights are abused on a grand scale, the broth of purity boils and feeds the rebellion of a new order.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • When the book comes out it may hurt you - but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.
    ― James Baldwin
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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
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  • You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.
    James Baldwin: Reflections of a Maverick (1984)
    ― James Baldwin
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  • You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
    Doom and glory of knowing who you are (1963)
    ― James Baldwin
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  • You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.
    ― James Baldwin
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  • A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
    ― James Baldwin
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All James Baldwin famous quotes and sayings you will always find on greatest-quotations.com (page 6)

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