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Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.
James A. Baldwin
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James A. Baldwin
People
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More quotes by James A. Baldwin
Secrets hidden at the heart of midnight are simply waiting to be dragged to the light, as, on some unlucky high noon, they always are. But secrets shrouded in the glare of candor are bound to defeat even the most determined and agile inspector for the light is always changing and proves that the eye cannot be trusted.
James A. Baldwin
A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
James A. Baldwin
An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger.
James A. Baldwin
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
... every human being is an unprecedented miracle.
James A. Baldwin
The determination to outwit one's situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
James A. Baldwin
A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.
James A. Baldwin
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
It is only because the world looks on his talent with such a frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important.
James A. Baldwin
To defend oneself against a fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it fears must be faced.
James A. Baldwin
It seems to be typical of life in America ... that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.
James A. Baldwin
Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real.
James A. Baldwin
People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
James A. Baldwin
If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.
James A. Baldwin
We can make America what America must become.
James A. Baldwin
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
After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So-Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.
James A. Baldwin
It was as though we were a picture, trapped in time: this had been happening for hundreds of years, people sitting in a room, waiting for dinner, and listening to the blues.
James A. Baldwin
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
It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
James A. Baldwin