Famous Quotes by James Baldwin (58 Quotations)

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

James Baldwin – [Teams and Teamwork]

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.

James Baldwin – [Education]

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an immediate knowledge of its ugly side.

James Baldwin – [Vocation]

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.

James Baldwin – [Arts and Artists]

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love.

James Baldwin – [Sex]

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

James Baldwin – [Writers and Writing]

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.

James Baldwin – [Failure]

There is a ''sanctity'' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.

James Baldwin – [Children]

There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

James Baldwin – [Present]

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

James Baldwin – [Exile]

We are all androgynous, not only because we are all born of a woman impregnated by the seed of a man but because each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other — male in female, female in male, white in black and black in white. We are a part of each other. Many of my countrymen appear to find this fact exceedingly inconvenient and even unfair, and so, very often, do I. But none of us can do anything about it.

James Baldwin – [Gender]

We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be. The question is not what we can do now for the hypothetical Mexican, the hypothetical Negro. The question is what we really want out of life, for ourselves, what we think is real.

James Baldwin – [Minorities]

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

James Baldwin – [Belief]

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

James Baldwin – [Truth]

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

James Baldwin – [Quotations]

When the book comes out it may hurt you — but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.

James Baldwin – [Books and Reading]

Words like ''freedom,'' ''justice,'' ''democracy'' are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.

James Baldwin – [Human Rights]

You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

James Baldwin – [Oppression]