James Baldwin: Trending quotes

James Baldwin trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
James Baldwin: 326 quotes84 likes

“To accept one's past - one's history - is not the same things as drowning in it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Variant: To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
Source: The Fire Next Time

“Artists are here to disturb the peace.”

James Baldwin

“The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

James Baldwin

“Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.”

James Baldwin book Nobody Knows My Name

"The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy" in Esquire (May 1961)
Variant: Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
Source: Nobody Knows My Name

“I want to be an honest man and a good writer.”

James Baldwin

“Americans should never come to Europe,' she said, and tried to laugh and began to cry, 'it means they never can be happy again. What's the good of an American who isn't happy? Happiness was all we had.”

James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room

Source: Giovanni's Room

“We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have a sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be.”

James Baldwin

“There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.”

James Baldwin book Nobody Knows My Name

Source: Nobody Knows My Name

“After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart! And we can only repossess them in our minds.”

James Baldwin book Going to Meet the Man

Source: Going to Meet the Man

“It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Source: The Fire Next Time

“In order for this to happen, your entire frame of reference will have to change, and you will be forced to surrender many things that you now scarcely know you have.”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Source: The Fire Next Time

“Whose little boy are you?”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Source: The Fire Next Time

“I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.”

James Baldwin book Notes of a Native Son

Variant: I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also so much more than that. So are we all.
Source: Notes of a Native Son

“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.”

James Baldwin book Nobody Knows My Name

Source: Nobody Knows My Name

“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

James Baldwin book Small Great Things

Also appears in Jodi Picoult book Small Great Things
Source: In 1962 James Baldwin penned an essay titled “As Much Truth As One Can Bear” in “The New York Times Book Review”.
Context: We are the generation that must throw everything into the endeavor to remake America into what we say we want it to be. Without this endeavor, we will perish. ... Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.