“Whoever debases others is debasing himself.”

—  James Baldwin, book The Fire Next Time

The quote "Whoever debases others is debasing himself." is famous quote by James Baldwin (1924–1987), (1924-1987) writer from the United States.

Source: The Fire Next Time

Last update July 16, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

James Baldwin photo
James Baldwin163
(1924-1987) writer from the United States 1924–1987

Related quotes

Thomas Paine photo

“It is by distortedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased, till the whole is out of nature.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

Albert Lutuli photo

“"Laws and conditions that tend to debase human personality - a God-given force - be they brought about by the State or other individuals, must be relentlessly opposed in the spirit of defiance shown by St. Peter when he said to the rulers of his day: "Shall we obey God or man?" No one can deny that in so far as non-Whites are concerned in the Union of South Africa, laws and conditions that debase human personality abound.”

Albert Lutuli (1898–1967) South African politician

The Road to Freedom is via the Cross (1952)

“Whoever wants to be a leader should educate himself before educating others. Before preaching to others he should first practice himself. Whoever educates himself and improves his own morals is superior to the man who tries to teach and train others.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo

“I exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

The Study of History (1895)
Context: Most of this, I suppose, is undisputed, and calls for no enlargement. But the weight of opinion is against me when I exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong. The plea in extenuation of guilt and mitigation of punishment is perpetual. At every step we are met by arguments which go to excuse, to palliate, to confound right and wrong, and reduce the just man to the level of the reprobate. The men who plot to baffle and resist us are, first of all, those who made history what it has become. They set up the principle that only a foolish Conservative judges the present time with the ideas of the past; that only a foolish Liberal judges the past with the ideas of the present.

Charles Krauthammer photo

“For all the sublimity of art, physics, music, mathematics, and other manifestations of human genius, everything depends on the mundane, frustrating, often debased vocation known as politics (and its most exacting subspecialty — statecraft). Because if we don't get politics right, everything else risks extinction.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2010s, 2011, Are we alone in the universe? (2011)

Šantidéva photo

“Whoever wishes to quickly afford protection
To both himself and others
Should practice that holy secret:
The exchanging of self for others.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

Attributed

Lucian photo

“He is unpardonable, therefore, who cannot distinguish one from the other; but lays on history the paint of poetry, its flattery, fable, and hyperbole: it is just as ridiculous as it would be to clothe one of our robust wrestlers, who is as hard as an oak, in fine purple, or some such meretricious garb, and put paint on his cheeks; how would such ornaments debase and degrade him!”

Lucian (120) ancient Greek writer

How to Write History

Czeslaw Milosz photo

“You are a tongue of the debased,
of the unreasonable, hating themselves
even more than they hate other nations,
a tongue of informers,
a tongue of the confused,
ill with their own innocence.But without you, who am I?
Only a scholar in a distant country,
a success, without fears and humiliations.
Yes, who am I without you?
Just a philosopher, like everyone else.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"My Faithful Mother Tongue" (1968), trans. Czesŀaw Miŀosz and Robert Pinsky
City Without a Name (1969)

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues photo

“Reason and emotion counsel and supplement each other. Whoever heeds only the one, and puts aside the other, recklessly deprives himself of a portion of the aid granted us for the regulation of our conduct.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 173.

Anne Frank photo

“Whoever is happy will make others happy.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Related topics