Quote

It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.

James A. Baldwin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James A. Baldwin
Speak
Country
Many
People
Astonishing
Devoted
Afraid
Individual

More quotes by James A. Baldwin

Image
If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they're real for you whether they're real or not.
James A. Baldwin
Image
We are very cruelly trapped between what we would like to be and what we actually are. And we cannot possibly become what we would like to be until we are willing to ask ourselves just why the lives we lead on this continent are mainly so empty, so tame, and so ugly.
James A. Baldwin
Image
All racists are irresponsible.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Most people... find a disorientating mismatch between the long-term nature of their liabilities and the increasingly short-term nature of their assets.
James A. Baldwin
Image
The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.
James A. Baldwin
Image
The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
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
A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees.
James A. Baldwin
Image
You took the best, so why not take the rest?
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
It seems to be typical of life in America ... that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Life is more important than art that's what makes art important.
James A. Baldwin
Image
We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have a sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be.
James A. Baldwin
Image
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
James A. Baldwin
Image
A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.
James A. Baldwin
Image
A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.
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
The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Sometimes you hear a person speak the truth and you know that they are speaking the truth. But you also know that they have not heard themselves, do not know what they have said: do not know that they have revealed much more than they have said. This may be why the truth remains, on the whole, so rare.
James A. Baldwin