“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”
Time
“Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.”
EducationAll Quotes by James A. Baldwin
“People can cry much easier than they can change.”
Change“Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.”
Men“The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did - which was to hide.”
Failure“Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?”
Love“The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.”
Knowledge“Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.”
Education“It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
Power“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“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“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“No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.”
Time“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”
History“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
Good“American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.”
History“The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.”
Power“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“The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.”
Power“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“Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.”
Truth