Quote

He may be a very nice man. But I haven't got the time to figure that out. All I know is, he's got a uniform and a gun and I have to relate to him that way. That's the only way to relate to him because one of us may have to die.

James A. Baldwin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James A. Baldwin
Dies
Relate
May
Gun
Way
Police
Men
Figure
Time
Havens
Haven
Figures
Uniform
Nice
Uniforms

More quotes by James A. Baldwin

Image
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
Image
All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.
James A. Baldwin
Image
There are people in the world for whom coming along is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.
James A. Baldwin
Image
The past is what makes the present coherent, and the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.
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
The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.
James A. Baldwin
Image
After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart! And we can only repossess them in our minds.
James A. Baldwin
Image
All racists are irresponsible.
James A. Baldwin
Image
If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected - those, precisely, who need the law's protection most! - and listens to their testimony.
James A. Baldwin
Image
It is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know-which is the price of your performance and survival-you do not exist. It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, you.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands we have no right to assume otherwise. If we do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.
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
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
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
A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
James A. Baldwin
Image
It is impossible to pretend that you are not heir to, and therefore, however inadequately or unwillingly, responsible to, and for, the time and place that give you life -- without becoming, at very best, a dangerously disoriented human being.
James A. Baldwin
Image
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
James A. Baldwin
Image
If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
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