Quote

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

James A. Baldwin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James A. Baldwin
Inspirational
Believe

More quotes by James A. Baldwin

Image
Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Life is more important than art that's what makes art important.
James A. Baldwin
Image
It is dangerous to be an American Negro male. America has never wanted its Negroes to be men, and does not, generally, treat them as men. It treats them as mascots, pets, or things.
James A. Baldwin
Image
The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Writing is a political instrument.
James A. Baldwin
Image
You write in order to change the world.
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
The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through.
James A. Baldwin
Image
The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Tell me, he said, What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for? Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel. And when you have waited—-has it made you sure?
James A. Baldwin
Image
The world's definitions are one thing and the life one actually lives is quite another. One cannot allow oneself, nor one's family, friends, or lovers - to say nothing of one's children - to live according to the world's definitions: one must find a way, perpetually, to be stronger and better than that.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Society is held together by our need we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Yr crown has been bought and paid for. All you have to do is put it on yr head
James A. Baldwin
Image
All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
James A. Baldwin
Image
The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge. - James Baldwin, The Creative Process
James A. Baldwin
Image
You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]
James A. Baldwin
Image
The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.
James A. Baldwin