Then I buckled up my shoes, and I started. James A. Baldwin More Quotes by James A. Baldwin More Quotes From James A. Baldwin The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in. James A. Baldwin changelifeneeds 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 loveromanticrelationship Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality. James A. Baldwin politicalcolorreality I think that the inability to love is the central problem, because that inability masks a certain terror, and that terror is the terror of being touched. And if you can't be touched, you can't be changed. And if you can't be changed, you can't be alive. James A. Baldwin inability-to-lovelove-isthinking 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 wickedcivilizationpeople Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable. James A. Baldwin imaginationevilheart The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. James A. Baldwin forcefactsway And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time, and furthermore, to win. James A. Baldwin spacechoiceswinning Whoever debases others is debasing himself. James A. Baldwin wise-wordshumiliationafrican-american 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. James A. Baldwin breakuprealchange Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. James A. Baldwin povertyblackinspirational You've got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble. James A. Baldwin treatstroubleworld The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can. And if one despairs-- as who has not?-- of human love, God's love alone is left. James A. Baldwin starsflowermoon The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. James A. Baldwin successhappinesslife In order to have a conversation with someone you must reveal yourself. James A. Baldwin diversityjusticeorder One writes out of one thing only - one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art. James A. Baldwin realsweetart 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 A. Baldwin painpeopleway Remember, to hate, to be violent, is demeaning. It means you're afraid of the other side of the coin -- to love and be loved. James A. Baldwin coinshatemean God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead. James A. Baldwin voicebook The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through. Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not had had ever, really, been present at his life. James A. Baldwin terrible-eventspainmorning
