Quotes by James Baldwin

James Baldwin

American writer

Alive from: 1924-1987

Category: Writers (Contemporary)

Quotes 1 till 15 of 120.

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  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 battle field.

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  An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

• James Baldwin

  

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  But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

• James Baldwin

  

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  Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

• James Baldwin

  

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  Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
  Source: Nobody Knows My Name (1961)

• James Baldwin

  

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  Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty - necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.

• James Baldwin

  

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  The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an immediate knowledge of its ugly side.

• James Baldwin

  

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  A devotion to humanity is... too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.

• James Baldwin

  

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  A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.

• James Baldwin

  

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  A man's balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.

• James Baldwin

  

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  A platitude is simply a truth repeated till people get tired of hearing it.

• James Baldwin

  

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  A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.

• James Baldwin

  

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  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 Baldwin

  

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  All art is a kind of confession.
  Source: Nobody Knows My Name (1961)

• James Baldwin

  

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  Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.