James Baldwin

Novelist

1924-08-02 – 1987-12-01

James Baldwin was an American writer and public intellectual known for essays, novels, and social criticism on race and identity. His major works include Go Tell It on the Mountain and The Fire Next Time.

Quotes by James Baldwin

I don't give a damn if there's any hope for them or not. But I know that I am not about to be bugged by any more white jokers who still can't figure out whether I'm human or not. If they don't know, baby, sad on them, and I hope they drop dead slowly, in great pain.
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One of the things, though, that has always afflicted the American reality and the American vision is this aversion to history. History is not something you read about in a book, history is not even the past— it's the present. Because everybody operates, whether or not we know it, out of assumptions which are produced and produced only by our history. Now the history of this country is not bloodier than other countries, but it's bloody. It is not more criminal than that of other countries, but it's criminal. Or in short, it's not worse than the history of France or England or any country we can name— but it's different.
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I had been sent away to help guarantee and perpetuate this indifference. No one, here, knew what was happening anywhere else. Perhaps no one ever knows that, anywhere: wherever here may be, it must always happen here before it can be perceived to have happened. And then, it is not really perceived, it is simply endured. Out of this endurance come, for the most part, alas, monuments, legends, and lies. People cling to these in order to deny that what happened is always happening; that what happened is not an event skewered and immobilized by time, but a continuing and timeless mirror of ourselves.
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...when the black populations of the world have a future, so will the Western nations have a future-and not till then. But the terrible probability is that the Western populations, struggling to hold on to what they have stolen from their captives, and unable to look into their mirror will precipitate a chaos throughout the world which, if it does not bring life on this planet to an end, will bring about a racial war such as the world has never seen, and for which generations yet unborn will curse our names forever.
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...all the fears with which I had grown up, and which were now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between the world and me...
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Ain't no such thing as a little fault or a big fault. Satan get his foot in the door, he ain't going to rest till he's in the room. You is in the Word or you ain't--ain't no halfway with God.
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That summer, in any case, all the fears with which I had grown up, and which were now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between the world and me, and drove me into the church.
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You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything.
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...when the black populations of the world have a future, so will the Western nations have a future-and not till then. But the terrible probability is that the Western populations, struggling to hold on to what they have stolen from their captives, and unable to look into their mirror will precipitate a chaos throughout the world which, if it does not bring life on this planet to an end, will bring about a racial war such as the world has never seen, and for which generations yet unborn will curse our names forever.
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Ain't no such thing as a little fault or a big fault. Satan get his foot in the door, he ain't going to rest till he's in the room. You is in the Word or you ain't--ain't no halfway with God.
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I had been sent away to help guarantee and perpetuate this indifference. No one, here, knew what was happening anywhere else. Perhaps no one ever knows that, anywhere: wherever here may be, it must always happen here before it can be perceived to have happened. And then, it is not really perceived, it is simply endured. Out of this endurance come, for the most part, alas, monuments, legends, and lies. People cling to these in order to deny that what happened is always happening; that what happened is not an event skewered and immobilized by time, but a continuing and timeless mirror of ourselves.
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You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything.
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One of the things, though, that has always afflicted the American reality and the American vision is this aversion to history. History is not something you read about in a book, history is not even the past— it's the present. Because everybody operates, whether or not we know it, out of assumptions which are produced and produced only by our history. Now the history of this country is not bloodier than other countries, but it's bloody. It is not more criminal than that of other countries, but it's criminal. Or in short, it's not worse than the history of France or England or any country we can name— but it's different.
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That summer, in any case, all the fears with which I had grown up, and which were now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between the world and me, and drove me into the church.
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I don't give a damn if there's any hope for them or not. But I know that I am not about to be bugged by any more white jokers who still can't figure out whether I'm human or not. If they don't know, baby, sad on them, and I hope they drop dead slowly, in great pain.
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...all the fears with which I had grown up, and which were now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between the world and me...
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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.
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The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
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When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.
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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.
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