FastSaying

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.


James A. Baldwin

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on ...
JAMES BALDWIN I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on ...
JAMES ARTHUR BALDWIN I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on th...
JAMES BALDWIN We love debt in America more so than any other country.
ANTHONY HSIEH you weren't mine to begin with.
IAIN S. THOMAS It's important for the citizens of this country and the citizens of the world to know there were mor...
JAMES HALL I never loved you any more than I do, right this second. And I'll never love you any less than I do,...
KAMI GARCIA This is my skin. This is not your skin, yet you are still under it.
IAIN THOMAS Intellectually I know America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better ...
SINCLAIR LEWIS Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is b...
SINCLAIR LEWIS Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is be...
SINCLAIR LEWIS Intellectually, I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is b...
SINCLAIR LEWIS If there is technological advance without social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increas...
, THE OTHER AMERICA, 1962 If i'm louder would you see me?
NIALL HORAN This homer is even more important than the one I hit for the Marlins in the World Series. This was f...
ALEX GONZALEZ Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is be...
SINCLAIR LEWIS To other people you could just be another girl,to me your the world,the reason i wake up,the reason ...
NICKOLI LEE ALLEN D'AVANZO I love hockey, and I don't love it for any other reason than when I get out there and play, I enjoy ...
BRENDAN FEHR She's beautiful, good with the media and hasn't even come into her own yet. She may earn more than a...
DEAN BONHAM The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her...
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her...
ALEXIS TOCQUEVILLE We had to punish this industry in such a way that everybody in this country and everybody in the wor...
MIKE MOORE We have more non-English players in our league than any other country in the world.
GORDON TAYLOR If you are reading this... I'm dead so far probably or still alive who knows?
It's bad day in b...
DEYTH BANGER In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.
MOTHER TERESA Why do you call her 'love'?" James asks. "I've heard you say that before, too. A lot. Are you in lov...
TAHEREH MAFI Everybody sing like it's the last song you will ever sing
Tell me, tell me, do you feel the pre...
HAYLEY WILLIAMS No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any righ...
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any righ...
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT For me, the country where I feel good, where I feel in harmony with the lifestyle and fundamental va...
ALAIN JUPPE I had immigrant grandparents who came to this country and came for religious freedom and loved it, n...
DAN ROSENSWEIG I will love myself despite the ease with which I lean toward the opposite.
SHANE L. KOYCZAN This was our first visit to an African country and South African conditions of detention could certa...
LEILA ZERROUGUI Hereafter in a better world than this,I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE I spent more time on dark ships in danger zones than any other woman in the world.
ELIZABETH KENNY The great cathedrals of Europe took years to complete, and this one may take years to complete as we...
TOM MONAGHAN I, the soul called Wanderer, love you, human Ian. And that will never change, no matter what I might...
STEPHENIE MEYER I've been to the Vatican more than anyplace else outside this country in the world. I am mesmeri...
RUSH LIMBAUGH Hereafter, in a better world than this,
I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE This is a sanctuary to drop all the hard feelings and to get relieved.I feel that I'm living on this...
NISHI DE SILVA There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.
MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA I don't want to criticize any other designers, but I have to say that many of the people involve...
SHIGERU MIYAMOTO Poets, Writers . . . know that we are the enchanting magicians that nourishes the seeds of dreams an...
WILLIAM S. PETERS, SR. I know that John Kerry will make this country stronger and more secure for my children and for your ...
JOHN EDWARDS You cannot criticize Israel in this country (USA) and survive
HELEN THOMAS I am an American. I love my country and have great hopes for it. It is for this reason that I speak ...
JOHNNY DEPP There’s a reason for the word heartbeat not be called beat of heart. The perfect woman only needs ...
ROBIN SACREDFIRE The Bill of Rights isn't some legalistic fine print. It was written to make our lives freer, mor...
HARRY BROWNE I think it's fair to say more adultery goes on in hotels than any other place in the world.
ANDRE BALAZS China is emerging as a key growth engine for the world economy, contributing over a quarter of total...
SCOTT ANDERSON I think of how perhaps the best way to fly would be with hands full of earth, so you always remember...
ALLY CONDIE Japan has much more aggressive plans to build plants and facilities in North America than any other ...
DAN ALLEN The whole world depends on America ultimately, particularly Britain. And also, I love America - a ma...
PAUL JOHNSON There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread. -Mother Teresa.
MOTHER TERESA You live in a country that makes it harder to raise children than any other country in the world. Yo...
BILL CLINTON I put more pressure on myself than anybody in this world.
BRYCE HARPER You have to fight and hold on for all America, to say to all corporations in this country that in th...
ANNA BURGER I cannot think of any other couple who deserves this honor any more than Jim and Arlene,
VERNON WALTERS One said he wondered that leather was not dearer than any other thing. Being demanded a reason: b...
WILLIAM HAZLITT Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my preference! I never had a pre...
GEORGE ELIOT There are more compulsive gamblers today in America than ever before in the history of this country....
ARNIE WEXLER I've never heard of any other institution like this in Latin America or the world. It's really bizar...
DANIEL LEVY James gave his life for the city, for this country.
JOSEPH ZADROGA [Luther could have solved this for us by coming out, but I can't hate on him too much for his silenc...
JASON KING I would rather have your friendship than the love of any other woman in the world.
ANNE BRONTë I want to burn the world because Alan is gone," he said. "I want to destroy everything I see. But yo...
SARAH REES BRENNAN So this is going to be drill!?
DEYTH BANGER That's the only reason I'm here. I don't need to play the game for any other reason than to win a ch...
DREW BLEDSOE I won gold medals representing this country, but I've gotten more recognition around the world than ...
BOB HAYES I went to Mexico because it has a magic that does not have any other country in the world, but I ins...
CHAVELA VARGAS Do what you will, this world's a fiction and is made up of contradiction
WILLIAM BLAKE This fundraiser has been held for nearly a decade and was planned more than a year ago. The notion t...
STEVE MAVIGLIO It was a great thing for James to do. More than me, he is exactly what the pop world is looking for ...
CASSIE COMPTON To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their...
ROWAN ATKINSON Germany, more than almost any other country, is benefiting from a world economy that's expanding rob...
ANTON BOERNER I believe racism is at the roots of this. Not only have we suffered natural disasters, we've suffere...
MARLEINE BASTIEN I've traveled more this year than any other living human being, and if I'd traveled any more I would...
WALTER F. MONDALE I love you so much, so incredibly much," he went on, "and I forget when you're close to me, I forget...
CASSANDRA CLARE People pay for that they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And th...
DOROTHY ALLISON nothing in this world was more difficult than love.
GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ I hope that we can continue this cooperation on other critical issues related to America's futur...
DAN LIPINSKI In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in ...
NOAM CHOMSKY I fell in love for the right reason. I fell in love unconditionally.
HEATHER MILLS I believe deeply that children are more powerful than oil, more beautiful than rivers, more precious...
DANNY KAYE Your heart just breaks, that's all. But you can't judge or point fingers. You just have to be lucky ...
AUDREY HEPBURN This world was not created piecemeal. Africa was born no later and no earlier than any other geograp...
HAILE SELASSIE You have to accept the realities of the world in which we live. The U.S. is a superpower. It carries...
MALCOLM RIFKIND We're not stupid! We're just poor! And we have a right to insist on this distinction
ORHAN PAMUK Hereafter, in a better world than this, I shall desire more love and knowledge of you. -As You Like...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE This is like wartime. And all the poor, all the working poor who live from paycheck to paycheck. Thi...
PATRICIA ARQUETTE We are here to support the United States of America. We believe in this country, we believe in what ...
ALAN MCCOMB Today this country is producing more first rate business graduates than elsewhere in the world,
DAVID ARKLESS Experts on romance say for a happy marriage there has to be more than a passionate love. For a lasti...
MARILYN MONROE That doctrine of peace at any price has done more mischief than any I can well recall that have been...
BENJAMIN DISRAELI The competition out here is incredible and it gets tougher every week. But this week is more excitin...
JIM THORPE This has given me much more access to the mass media than I ever would have had. And for this reason...
WILLIAM BLUM That's it really; it's all love, whichever way you look at it, it's all love. How much you can Get f...
GEORGE HARRISON Everybody gets more pumped up for this game than any other game.
DREW POLAK I cared more about your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my p...
J.K. ROWLING

More James A. Baldwin

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
JAMES A. BALDWIN Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
JAMES A. BALDWIN There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bomb...
JAMES A. BALDWIN Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening th...
JAMES A. BALDWIN It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice c...
JAMES A. BALDWIN Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imita...
JAMES A. BALDWIN Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.
JAMES A. BALDWIN The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself...
JAMES A. BALDWIN Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy...
JAMES A. BALDWIN It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connect...
JAMES A. BALDWIN People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast...
JAMES A. BALDWIN Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, fo...
JAMES A. BALDWIN I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than tha...
JAMES A. BALDWIN Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. ...
JAMES A. BALDWIN To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.
JAMES A. BALDWIN No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, fo...
JAMES A. BALDWIN Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love ...
JAMES A. BALDWIN No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.
JAMES A. BALDWIN There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the m...
JAMES A. BALDWIN Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusias...
JAMES A. BALDWIN Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immu...
JAMES A. BALDWIN I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once h...
JAMES A. BALDWIN Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?
JAMES A. BALDWIN People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
JAMES A. BALDWIN The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world...
JAMES A. BALDWIN People can cry much easier than they can change.
JAMES A. BALDWIN Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
JAMES A. BALDWIN You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the w...
JAMES A. BALDWIN The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to ex...
JAMES A. BALDWIN It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the inde...
JAMES A. BALDWIN If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze...
JAMES A. BALDWIN When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.
JAMES A. BALDWIN The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybod...
JAMES A. BALDWIN Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours.
JAMES A. BALDWIN American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything an...
JAMES A. BALDWIN There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own e...
JAMES A. BALDWIN Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to cont...
JAMES A. BALDWIN A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
JAMES A. BALDWIN I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
JAMES A. BALDWIN Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.
JAMES A. BALDWIN The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's ...
JAMES A. BALDWIN Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, ...
JAMES A. BALDWIN To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be pr...
JAMES A. BALDWIN Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people ...
JAMES A. BALDWIN Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is...
JAMES A. BALDWIN When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action ...
JAMES A. BALDWIN The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a...
JAMES A. BALDWIN If you're afraid to die, you will not be able to live.
JAMES BALDWIN Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and t...
JAMES BALDWIN The future is like heaven. Everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.
JAMES BALDWIN The world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.
JAMES BALDWIN A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled. -James...
JAMES BALDWIN It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the i...
JAMES BALDWIN Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imita...
JAMES BALDWIN Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered ...
JAMES BALDWIN People can cry much easier than they can change.
JAMES BALDWIN You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you ...
JAMES BALDWIN If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more...
JAMES BALDWIN Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love ...
JAMES BALDWIN Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and th...
JAMES BALDWIN Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love ...
JAMES BALDWIN Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
JAMES BALDWIN Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy...
JAMES BALDWIN Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty o...
JAMES BALDWIN The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself...
JAMES BALDWIN The American ideal of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal of masculinity. This idea...
JAMES BALDWIN The greatest significance of the present student generation is that it is through them that the poin...
JAMES BALDWIN If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described...
JAMES BALDWIN Society is held together by our need; we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that ...
JAMES BALDWIN People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast...
JAMES BALDWIN When the book comes out it may hurt you -- but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I ...
JAMES BALDWIN I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once h...
JAMES BALDWIN There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the m...
JAMES BALDWIN It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.
JAMES BALDWIN But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without mo...
JAMES BALDWIN Anyone who has struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
JAMES BALDWIN Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people ...
JAMES BALDWIN I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on ...
JAMES BALDWIN We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we ...
JAMES BALDWIN We are all androgynous, not only because we are all born of a woman impregnated by the seed of a man...
JAMES BALDWIN Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in...
JAMES BALDWIN The paradox of education is precisely this -- that as one begins to become conscious one begins to e...
JAMES BALDWIN It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the inde...
JAMES BALDWIN A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
JAMES BALDWIN People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on...
JAMES BALDWIN The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other his...
JAMES BALDWIN An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wre...
JAMES BALDWIN An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience...
JAMES BALDWIN You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world...
JAMES BALDWIN The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the pa...
JAMES BALDWIN Be careful what you set your heart upon -- for it will surely be yours.
JAMES BALDWIN For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting...
JAMES BALDWIN The future is... black.
JAMES BALDWIN Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom...
JAMES BALDWIN Words like freedom, justice, democracy are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. Peop...
JAMES BALDWIN James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no on...
JAMES BALDWIN If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze...
JAMES BALDWIN There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own e...
JAMES BALDWIN Experience is a private, and a very largely speechless affair.
JAMES BALDWIN Experience that destroys innocents also leads one back to it.
JAMES BALDWIN Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is...
JAMES BALDWIN When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.
JAMES BALDWIN No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, ...
JAMES BALDWIN No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, fo...
JAMES BALDWIN Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty -- necessarily, since a religion...
JAMES BALDWIN There is a sanctity involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one ou...
JAMES BALDWIN Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imita...
JAMES BALDWIN It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themsel...
JAMES BALDWIN Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a s...
JAMES BALDWIN Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
JAMES BALDWIN People can cry much easier than they can change.
JAMES BALDWIN The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an immediate knowledge of its ugly si...
JAMES BALDWIN The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, ...
JAMES BALDWIN All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forc...
JAMES BALDWIN Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibilit...
JAMES BALDWIN We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied ...
JAMES BALDWIN The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
JAMES BALDWIN Rage cannot be hidden, it can only be dissembled. This dissembling deludes the thoughtless, and stre...
JAMES BALDWIN Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocu...
JAMES BALDWIN Everything in life depends on how that life accepts its limits.
JAMES BALDWIN He may be a very nice man. But I haven't got the time to figure that out. All I know is, he's got a ...
JAMES BALDWIN The American ideal, after all, is that everyone should be as much alike as possible.
JAMES BALDWIN Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated and this was an immut...
JAMES BALDWIN The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers.
JAMES BALDWIN For I am—or I was—one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their abili...
JAMES BALDWIN I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on th...
JAMES BALDWIN Anyone who had ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
JAMES BALDWIN The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, ...
JAMES BALDWIN Whose little boy are you?
JAMES BALDWIN There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for the...
JAMES BALDWIN There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are...
JAMES BALDWIN To accept one's past -- one's history -- is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how...
JAMES BALDWIN Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father's face, for behind your father's...
JAMES BALDWIN Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty o...
JAMES BALDWIN If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are descr...
JAMES BALDWIN Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
JAMES BALDWIN I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once h...
JAMES BALDWIN There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be reall...
JAMES BALDWIN It is only because the world looks on his talent with such a frightening indifference that the arti...
JAMES BALDWIN Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also peopl...
JAMES BALDWIN A platitude is simply a truth repeated till people get tired of hearing it.
JAMES BALDWIN We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; a...
JAMES BALDWIN The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
JAMES BALDWIN We go down the hall again, thank heaven, to my drink.
JAMES BALDWIN Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck -- but, most of all, endurance.
JAMES BALDWIN The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers.
JAMES BALDWIN Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where...
JAMES BALDWIN I imagine one of the reasons people cling to thier hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once h...
JAMES BALDWIN I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.
JAMES BALDWIN All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forc...
JAMES BALDWIN It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the In...
JAMES BALDWIN Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense...
JAMES BALDWIN Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossib...
JAMES BALDWIN The fact that their [the flower children's] uniforms and their jargons precisely represented the dis...
JAMES BALDWIN The first time I saw Reverend Shuttlesworth, for example, he came strolling across the parking lot o...
JAMES BALDWIN To be liberated from the stigma of blackness by embracing it is to cease, forever, one's interior ar...
JAMES BALDWIN The distance between us, and I had never thought of this before, was that they did not know this, an...
JAMES BALDWIN Afro-Americans. Which is but a wedding, however, of two confusions, an arbitrary linking of two unde...
JAMES BALDWIN People, even if they are so thoughtless as to be born black, do not come into this world merely to p...
JAMES BALDWIN I remembered his older brother, who had died in Sicily, in battle for the free world- he had barely ...
JAMES BALDWIN Incontestably, alas, most people are not, in action, worth very much; and yet, every human being is ...
JAMES BALDWIN All the western nations are caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended humanism: this means that th...
JAMES BALDWIN It must be remembered that in those great days I was considered to be an "integrationist" - this was...
JAMES BALDWIN The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves ...
JAMES BALDWIN I was in a terrible confusion. Sometimes I thought, but this is your life. Stop fighting it. Stop fi...
JAMES BALDWIN I saw myself, sharply, as a wanderer, an adventurer, rocking through the world, unanchored.
JAMES BALDWIN People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their...
JAMES BALDWIN Somebody," said Jacques, "your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever di...
JAMES BALDWIN Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current a...
JAMES BALDWIN Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are...
JAMES BALDWIN People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than th...
JAMES BALDWIN With everything in me screaming No! yet the sum of me sighed Yes.
JAMES BALDWIN I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass.
JAMES BALDWIN Only a man can see in the face of a woman the girl she was. It is a secret which can be revealed onl...
JAMES BALDWIN You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you ...
JAMES BALDWIN The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not ...
JAMES BALDWIN Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not re...
JAMES BALDWIN People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to...
JAMES BALDWIN [I am] someone who represents a very complex country which insists on being simple-minded. And simpl...
JAMES BALDWIN Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
JAMES BALDWIN Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are...
JAMES BALDWIN Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
JAMES BALDWIN Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young...
JAMES BALDWIN It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the indepen...
JAMES BALDWIN If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.
JAMES BALDWIN The power to define the other seals one's definition of oneself.
JAMES BALDWIN It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, b...
JAMES BALDWIN Our crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it
JAMES BALDWIN If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own-which it is-and render impass...
JAMES BALDWIN In my experience - and this is a very awkward way to put it, since I don't really know what the word...
JAMES BALDWIN But to look back from the stony plain along the road which led one to that place is not at all the s...
JAMES BALDWIN To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be JAMES BALDWIN The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to ex...
JAMES BALDWIN If one wishes to be instructed--not that anyone does--concerning the treacherous role that memory pl...
JAMES BALDWIN And here I was, left with only myself to deal with. It was entirely up to me.
JAMES BALDWIN The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you would be involved with the realization...
JAMES BALDWIN Many have given up. They stay home and watch the TV screen, living on the earnings of their parents,...
JAMES BALDWIN I remembered my mother’s insistence that I always wear clean underwear because I might get knocked...
JAMES BALDWIN Life is tragic simply because the earth turns, and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, f...
JAMES BALDWIN Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that ga...
JAMES BALDWIN