James Baldwin Quotes

• The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

  James Baldwin

• Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.

  James Baldwin

• I’ve always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

  James Baldwin

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

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Children

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

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People

• No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

  James Baldwin

• It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

  James Baldwin

• People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Inspirational

• 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

• Education is indoctrination if you’re white – subjugation if you’re black.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Education

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

  James Baldwin

• 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

• 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

• Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Inspirational

• 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

• 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

• 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

• For these are all our children. We will all profit by, or pay for, whatever they become,

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Children, Future, Justice

• The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

  James Baldwin

  Topics in Love

• 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.

  James Baldwin

  Tags in Patriotism

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 - 25th November

Births

• 1913 - Lewis Thomas
• 1915 - Augusto Pinochet
• 1869 - Ben Lindsey
• 1562 - Lope de Vega
• 1939 - Martin Feldstein

Deaths

• 1973 - Laurence Harvey
• 2002 - Karel Reisz
• 1998 - Nelson Goodman
• 1974 - U Thant
• 1970 - Yukio Mishima