James Baldwin Quotes

Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

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.

People are full of dirty words. The only time they do not use them, most people, I mean, is when they are describing something dirty.

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.

If the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.

Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.

It comes as a great shock around the age of five, six or seven to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians and, although you are rooting for […]

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

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.