“American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.”
History
“No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.”
TimeAll Quotes by James A. Baldwin
“The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.”
Knowledge“I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.”
History“No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.”
Time“If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.”
Relationship“Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.”
Truth“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
Good“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”
History“Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.”
Education“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 one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread.”
Respect“The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.”
Power“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war love is a growing up.”
Love“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”
Fear“I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
Love“The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.”
Power“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.”
Education“Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.”
Money“It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
Power“Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings.”
Hope“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”
Time