Quote

Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings.

James A. Baldwin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James A. Baldwin
Also
Pessimist
Better
Pessimism
Human
Beneath
Humans
Notice
Think
Beings
Thinking
Race
People
Hope
Others
Pessimists

More quotes by James A. Baldwin

Image
Artists are here to disturb the peace.
James A. Baldwin
Image
She was twenty and had come to realize that, though she had a voice, she wasn't a singer that to endure and embrace the life of a singer demands a whole lot more than a voice.
James A. Baldwin
Image
It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.
James A. Baldwin
Image
If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.
James A. Baldwin
Image
You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.
James A. Baldwin
Image
The impossible is the least that one can demand.
James A. Baldwin
Image
When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.
James A. Baldwin
Image
People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen forget.
James A. Baldwin
Image
America sometimes resembles, at least from the point of view of a black man, an exceedingly monotonous minstrel show the same dances, same music, same jokes. One has done (or been) the show so long that one can do it in one’s own sleep.
James A. Baldwin
Image
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 A. Baldwin
Image
An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
James A. Baldwin
Image
The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Women manage, quite brilliantly, on the whole, and to stunning and unforeseeable effect, to survive and surmount being defined by others. They dismiss the definition, however dangerous or wounding it may be-- or even, sometimes, find a way to utilize it.
James A. Baldwin
Image
When human rights are abused on a grand scale, the broth of purity boils and feeds the rebellion of a new order.
James A. Baldwin
Image
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 A. Baldwin
Image
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 A. Baldwin
Image
We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Remember, to hate, to be violent, is demeaning. It means you're afraid of the other side of the coin -- to love and be loved.
James A. Baldwin
Image
But, when the chips are down, its better to be furious with someone you love, or frightened for someone you love, than be put through the merciless horror of being ashamed of someone you love.
James A. Baldwin