All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive. James A. Baldwin More Quotes by James A. Baldwin More Quotes From James A. Baldwin 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 speak may sometimes People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in order to console me for the wretchedness of blacks. But an itemized account of the American failure does not console me and it should not console anyone else. That hundreds of thousands of white people are living, in effect, no better than the "niggers" is not a fact to be regarded with complacency. The social and moral bankruptcy suggested by this fact is of the bitterest, most terrifying kind. James A. Baldwin white order people When you're writing you're trying to find out something which you don't know. James A. Baldwin knows writing trying It happened, as many things do, imperceptibly, in many ways at once. I date it - the slow crumbling of my faith, the pulverization of my fortress - from the time, about a year after I had begun to preach, when I began to read again. I justified this desire by the fact that I was still in school, and I began, fatally, with Dostoyevsky. James A. Baldwin desire years school It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak. James A. Baldwin speak country people 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 field of battle. James A. Baldwin society battle america The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge." - James Baldwin, "The Creative Process James A. Baldwin creative artist suffering It must be remembered that in those great days I was considered to be an "integrationist" - this was never, quite, my own idea of myself - and Malcolm was considered to be a "racist in reverse." This formulation, in terms of power - and power is the arena in which racism is acted out - means absolutely nothing: it may even be described as a cowardly formulation. The powerless, by definition, can never be "racists," for they can never make the world pay for what they feel or fear except by the suicidal endeavor which makes them fanatics or revolutionaries, or both. James A. Baldwin suicidal mean ideas We can make America what America must become. James A. Baldwin america Each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other - male in female, female in male, white in black, and black in white. We are part of each other. Many of my countrymen appear to find this fact exceedingly inconvenient and even unfair, and so, very often, do I. But none of us can do anything about it. James A. Baldwin black white forever Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel. James A. Baldwin dishonesty inability emotion When human rights are abused on a grand scale, the broth of purity boils and feeds the rebellion of a new order. James A. Baldwin revolution rights order 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 oneself one-day life We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours. James A. Baldwin fake-people deeds belief The impossible is the least that one can demand. James A. Baldwin demand impossible Being in the pulpit, was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion worked. James A. Baldwin behind-the-scenes illusion theatre Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes. James A. Baldwin change self giving But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief. James A. Baldwin punishment grief keys If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you'll never make it. James A. Baldwin trying life thinking Then I buckled up my shoes, and I started. James A. Baldwin shoes inspirational
