James Baldwin Quotes

Afro-Americans. Which is but a wedding, however, of two confusions, an arbitrary linking of two undefined and currently undefinable proper nouns. I mean that, in the case of Africa, Africa is still ch...

Every society is really governed by hidden laws, by unspoken but profound assumptions on the part of the people, and ours is no exception.

Yes, he had heard it all his life, but it was only now that his ears were opened to this sound that came from darkness, that could only come from darkness, that yet bore such sure witness to the glory...

I'm going to pray God, said John—and his voice shook, whether with joy or grief he could not say—to keep me, and make me strong ... to stand ... to stand against the enemy ... and against everything a...

We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.

Ain't no such thing as a little fault or a big fault. Satan get his foot in the door, he ain't going to rest till he's in the room. You is in the Word or you ain't--ain't no halfway with God.

Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.

Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

We take our shape it is true within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth and yet it is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed.

Yves did not like showers, he preferred long, scalding baths, with newspapers, cigarettes, and whiskey on a chair next to the bathtub, and with Eric nearby to talk to, to shampoo his hair, and to scru...

Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovab...

You don't know what's happening on the other side of the wall, because you don't want to know.

Experience which destroys innocence also leads one back to it.

You think...that my life is shameful because my encounters are. And they are. But you should ask yourself why they are.Why are they—shameful?Because there is no affection in them, and no joy. It’s lik...

Now, as then, we find ourselves bound, first without, then within, by the nature of our categorization. And escape is not effected through a bitter railing against this trap; it is as though this very...

Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore.

And then: 'Here comes your baby. Sois sage. Sois chic.' He moved slightly away and began talking to the boy next to him. And here my baby came indeed, through all that sunlight, his face flushed and h...

Wright puts this idea can only proceed from the assumption—not entirely unsound—that Americans, who evade, so far as possible, all genuine experience, have therefore no way of assessing the experience...

The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair;

I don't know, now, when I first looked at Hella and found her stale, found her body uninteresting, her presence grating. It seemed to happen all at once—I suppose that only means that it had been happ...