Explore Quotes by James A. Baldwin

If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving. And, after all, one can give freedom only by setting someone free.

The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.

Not only was I not born to be a slave; I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization of ourselves; the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his.

Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.

In order to have a conversation with someone you must reveal yourself.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.

There exists among the intolerable degraded, the perverse and powerful desire to force into the arena of the actual those fantastic crimes of which they have been accused, achieving their vengeance and their own destruction through making the nightmare real.

We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it.

To be with God is really to be involved in some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you.

Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.

The future is like heaven-everyone exalts it but no one wants to go there now.

The moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.

Experience is a private, very largely speechless affair.

Rage cannot be hidden, it can only be dissembled. This dissembling deludes the thoughtless, and strengthens rage and adds, to rage, contempt.

Rage can only with difficulty, and never entirely, be brought under the domination of the intelligence, and therefore is not susceptible to any arguments whatsoever.

I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.