James Baldwin Quotes, Status, and Thoughts

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

I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.

One cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own.

You cannot fix what you will not face.

To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.

The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.

Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.

Artists are here to disturb the peace.

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.

The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.

Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

every human being is an unprecedented miracle.

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead.

Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours.

People can cry much easier than they can change.

Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.

I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others.

In order to have a conversation with someone you must reveal yourself.

If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.

This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.

The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.

You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.