James Arthur Baldwin was one of the 20th century’s greatest writers and activist. He broke new literary ground with the exploration of racial and social issues in his many works. Baldwin was especially known for his essays on the black experience in America. Famous James Baldwin quotes will bring you closer to humanity, feed your soul and inspire you to change the world.
If you’re searching for quotes by prominent activists that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of inspirational Malcolm X quotes, Virginia Woolf quotes, and Sojourner Truth quotes.
Famous James Baldwin Quotes
The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. James Baldwin
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. 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, who had ever been alive. James Baldwin
It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. James Baldwin
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up. James A. Baldwin
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all. James Baldwin
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. James Baldwin
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. James Baldwin
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. James Baldwin
Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. James Baldwin
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 Baldwin,
Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch. James Baldwin
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. James Baldwin
Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? James Baldwin
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition. James Baldwin
Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable. James Baldwin
I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. James Baldwin
To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread. James Baldwin
I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do. James Baldwin
No one can possibly know what is about to happen it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time. James Baldwin
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up. James Baldwin
But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power. James Baldwin
Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be. James Baldwin
The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone. James Baldwin
People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead. James Baldwin
Education is indoctrination if you’re white subjugation if you’re black. James Baldwin
Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. James Baldwin
I want to be an honest man and a good writer. James Baldwin
The paradox of education is precisely this that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. James 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 Baldwin
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word love here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth. James Baldwin
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 Baldwin
Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. James Baldwin
A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled. James Baldwin
People can cry much easier than they can change. James 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 Baldwin
The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. James Baldwin
It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless. James Baldwin
It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind. James Baldwin
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 Baldwin
You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back. James Baldwin
People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. James Baldwin
There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain. James Baldwin
Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it. James Baldwin
To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. James Baldwin
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 Baldwin
People don’t have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you’re dead, when they’ve killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn’t have any character. They weep big, bitter tears not for you. For themselves, because they’ve lost their toy. James Baldwin
Be careful what you set your heart upon for it will surely be yours. James Baldwin
People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life. James Baldwin
Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. James Baldwin
It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here. James Baldwin
People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead. James Baldwin
Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity. James Baldwin
Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks. James Baldwin
It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. James Baldwin
People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned. James Baldwin
The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim he or she has become a threat. James Baldwin
Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. James Baldwin
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 Baldwin
It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind. James Baldwin
Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go. James Baldwin
The reason people think it’s important to be white is that they think it’s important not to be black. James Baldwin
You write in order to change the world if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it. James Baldwin
When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living. James Baldwin
The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see. James Baldwin
People can cry much easier than they can change. James Baldwin
True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one’s life. James Baldwin
The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions. James Baldwin
Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore. James Baldwin
Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law. James Baldwin
To accept one’s past one’s history is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought. James Baldwin
The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him. James Baldwin
Everybody’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality. James Baldwin
You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself. James Baldwin
If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody. James Baldwin
It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story. James Baldwin
People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned. James Baldwin
The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love. James Baldwin
Whoever debases others is debasing himself. James Baldwin
The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did which was to hide. James Baldwin
To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread. James Baldwin
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up. James Baldwin
You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all. James Baldwin
There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now. James Baldwin
Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law. James Baldwin
