James Baldwin Quotes

• It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Education

  Tags in Mind

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

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Love, Truth

  Tags in Reality

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Gay Pride, Lesbian, Homosexuality, Relationships, Journalist

• Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck — but, most of all, endurance.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Talent

• The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Glory, Spirit

• Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; Freedom is something that people take and people are as free as they want to be.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Freedom

• Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one’s beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Faith

• Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart, for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Perfection

  Tags in Doubt/Uncertainty, Heart, Evil

• 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

  Topics in Future

  Tags in Time

• For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Children

  Tags in Change/Growth, Duty, Earth

• 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

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Earth

• The future is like heaven – everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Future

  Tags in Heaven

• Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Hate

• People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People

• The writer’s greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writer

• Money, it turned out, was exactly like s*x, you thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it and thought of other things if you did.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Money

• 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

  Tags in Circumstance

• A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Education

  Tags in Fooled

• 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

  Topics in Love

• The making of an American begins at that point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

  James Baldwin

James Baldwin (106)

Birth:	2nd August, 1924
Death:	1987
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Essayist, Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Screenwriter

About

James Arthur Baldwin was born in Harlem, New York City, New York, USA. He was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, activist and social critic. He wrote several books include: Go Tell It on the Mountain(Semi-autobiographical novel), The Amen Corner(play), Notes of a Native Son(essays), Giovanni's Room(novel), Nobody Knows My Name(essays), Another Country(novel), The Fire Next Time(essays), Blues for Mister Charlie(play), Going to Meet the Man(Short stories), Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone(novel), No Name in the Street(essays), If Beale Street Could Talk(novel), The Devil Finds Work(essay), Just Above My Head(novel), Jimmy's Blues(poem), The Evidence of Things Not Seen(essays), The Price of the Ticket(essays), Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems, A Rap on Race(with Margaret Mead), A Dialogue(with Nikki Giovanni), and Little Man Little Man(children's novel). He wrote several films include: Go Tell It on the Mountain(TV film), Where the Heart Is, and I Am Not Your Negro(nominated- Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature).

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Today's Anniversary - 24th November

Births

• 1942 - Marlin Fitzwater
• 1957 - Denise Crosby
• 1938 - Oscar Robertson
• 1925 - William F. Buckley, Jr.
• 1948 - Spider Robinson

Deaths

• 2004 - Warren Spahn
• 1963 - Lee Harvey Oswald
• 1807 - Joseph Brant
• 1990 - Fred Shero
• 1957 - Diego Rivera