Tuesday, August 2, 2011

James Baldwin Quotes

  • Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. 
  • Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. 
  • I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. 
  • I knew I was black, of course, but I also knew I was smart. I didn’t know how I would use my mind, or even if I could, but that was the only thing I had to use.
  • It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. 
  • Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. 
  • No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it. 
  • People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
  • People can cry much easier than they can change.
  • People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned. 
  • The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. 
  • The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever. 
  • The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. 
  • The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions. 
  • The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others. 
  • The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in. 
  • There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention. 
  • There is a "sanctity" involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it. 
  • Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it. 
  • To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. 
  • 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. 
  • I knew I was black, of course, but I also knew I was smart. I didn’t know how I would use my mind, or even if I could, but that was the only thing I had to use.
Read more about James Baldwin 

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