INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES JAMES BALDWIN

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

“The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.”

“You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.”

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

“Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”

“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”

“The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to become conscious, one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.”

“People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead.”

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

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

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

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

“I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.”

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” QUOTES ABOUT JESUS DEATH FROM THE BIBLE

“The purpose of education… is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.”

“The danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity.”

“To accept one’s past—one’s history—is not the same thing as drowning in it.”

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.”

“I cannot conceive of you applauding me until I have first confronted your values.”

“You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t.”

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

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

“The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.”

“The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.”

“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”

“You always told me ‘It takes time.’ It’s taken my father’s time, my mother’s time, my uncle’s time, my brothers’ and my sisters’ time. How much time do you want for your progress?”

“The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.”

“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.”