James A. Baldwin

Quotes

• “To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that on...”
• “Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work ligh...”
• “The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in...”
• “The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then...”
• “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to critici...”
• “If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of f...”
• “Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by ...”
• “Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other thing...”
• “There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment the time is al...”
• “American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said a...”
• “The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of...”
• “The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.”
• “I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.”
• “It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.”
• “The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.”
• “I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.”
• “The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.”
• “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”