Quote

Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.

James A. Baldwin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James A. Baldwin
People
Inexorably
Negroes
Reveals
Precisely
Whatever
White

More quotes by James A. Baldwin

Image
Employment is my right my destiny.
James A. Baldwin
Image
The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Life is more important than art that's what makes art important.
James A. Baldwin
Image
The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
James A. Baldwin
Image
I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.
James A. Baldwin
Image
A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.
James A. Baldwin
Image
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
Image
Words like freedom, justice, democracy are not common concepts on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.
James A. Baldwin
Image
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
Image
Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated – in the main, abominably – because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.
James A. Baldwin
Image
Because I was raised in a Christian culture I never considered myself to be a totally free human being.
James A. Baldwin
Image
You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.
James A. Baldwin
Image
The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.
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
James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them.
James A. Baldwin
Image
All of us know, whether or not we are able to admit it, that mirrors can only lie, that death by drowning is all that awaits one there. It is for this reason that love is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
James A. Baldwin
Image
God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead.
James A. Baldwin
Image
You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world... The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way... people look at reality, then you can change it.
James A. Baldwin
Image
It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.
James A. Baldwin