James Baldwin Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People can cry much easier than they can change.

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

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

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

every human being is an unprecedented miracle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Artists are here to disturb the peace.

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

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

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

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

You cannot fix what you will not face.

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

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

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