James Baldwin Quotes - Page 3

American - Novelist August 2, 1924 - December 1, 1987

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it. James Baldwin

Truth, Legend, Language, Universe, Root

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story. James Baldwin

Music, Limits, Understanding, Story

It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless. James Baldwin

Man, Rare, Helpless, Who, Very, Does

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

Child, Him, Cannot, Who, Fooled, Taught

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly. James Baldwin

Beauty, Sad, Beautiful, Live, People

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

History, American, Land, Begins, He, His

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours. James Baldwin

Experience, Thought, Finding, Deeds, Our

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

Love, Glory, Spirit, Most, Attracted

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

Time, Know, First Time, Only, First

There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it. James Baldwin

Child, World, Better, Out, Than, Bombing

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it. James Baldwin

Culture, People, Price, Without, Come

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned. James Baldwin

World, Impossible, Person, Never, Than

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock. James Baldwin

Born, Go, Changes, Us, Through, Our

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention. James Baldwin

Eyes, Man, Help, Attention, Own, Nothing

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

Face, Mystery, Unknown, Like, Because

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent. James Baldwin

Talent, World, Born, Nothing, Against

Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities. James Baldwin

Life, Limits, Need, Mysterious, Tragedy

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

People, Become, More, Pay, Lead, Still

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did - which was to hide. James Baldwin

Failure, Think, Hide, End, Young, Living

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power. James Baldwin

Relationship, Power, Morality, Without

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

Free, Faithful, Equal, Most, Them

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