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4b0fbef
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Every effort made by the child's elders to prepare him for a fate from which they cannot protect him causes him secretly, in terror, to begin to await, without knowing that he is doing so, his mysterious and inexorable punishment. He must be "good" not only in order to please his parents and not only to avoid being punished by them; behind their authority stands another, nameless and impersonal, infinitely harder to please, and bottomlessly..
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James Baldwin |
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a70c1a2
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It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of..
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James Baldwin |
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ec708f6
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In spite of the Puritan-Yankee equation of virtue with well-being, Negroes had excellent reasons for doubting that money was made or kept by any very striking adherence to the Christian virtues; it certainly did not work that way for black Christians.
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James Baldwin |
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c6065bf
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become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him. I
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James Baldwin |
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d005480
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The only thing white people have that black people need, or should want, is power--and no one holds power forever. White people cannot, in the generality, be taken as models of how to live. Rather, the white man is himself in sore need of new standards, which will release him from his confusion and place him once again in fruitful communion with the depths of his own being.
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self-awareness
life
white-people
blacks
whites
power
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James Baldwin |
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87c9379
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You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.
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James Baldwin |
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a09e9c6
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We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours. --"The Crusade of Indignation," in Nation (New York, 7 July 1956; repr. in The Price of the Ticket, 1985) It"
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James Baldwin |
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59056b2
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It is very nearly impossible . . . to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind. --"They Can't Turn Back," in Mademoiselle (New York, Aug. 1960; repr. in The Price of the Ticket, 1985) The"
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James Baldwin |
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23b90c7
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I have known both of you all your lives, have carried your Daddy in my arms and on my shoulders, kissed and spanked him and watched him learn to walk. I don't know if you've known anybody from that far back; if you've loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man, you gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort. Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father's face, for beh..
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James Baldwin |
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7a2ee08
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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. --"The Negro Child--His Self-Image," in Saturday Review (New York, 21 Dec. 1963; repr. in The Price of the Ticket as "A Talk to Teachers," 1985) Europe"
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James Baldwin |
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81936df
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In the United States, violence and heroism have been made synonymous except when it comes to blacks, and
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James Baldwin |
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f19fd04
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It's a strange thing to dream of faraway places, only to find when I reach them, I am dreaming of home. The affliction of the dreamer, I suppose.
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James Baldwin |
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772f2a2
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Out of joy strength came, strength that was fashioned to bear sorrow: sorrow brought forth joy. Forever? This was Ezekiel's wheel, in the middle of the burning air forever -- and the little wheel ran by faith, and the big wheel ran by the grace of God.
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James Baldwin |
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7acd32e
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You can talk about doing a thing until everyone finally talks you out of it or you can actually do the thing.
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James Baldwin |
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e61c9f1
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I existed somewhere between yesterday's memories and tomorrow's expectations. The time allotted by the gods to a sedentary man with a sedentary mind can be too much; and yet, for a seeker, it is never enough.
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James Baldwin |
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a5f16e9
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The distance between us, and I had never thought of this before, was that they did not know this, and I now dared to realize that I loved them more than they loved me. And I do not mean that my love was greater: who dares judge the inexpressible expense another pays for his life? who knows how much one is loved, by whom, or what that love may be called on to do? No, the way the cards had fallen meant that I had to face more about them than ..
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James Baldwin |
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4c0a3b0
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You can always drive to your destination, but a true journey is made on foot.
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James Baldwin |
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01e6c98
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this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.
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James Baldwin |
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bc28d42
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there was about his elders an ease in the holy place, and a levity, that made his soul uneasy.
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James Baldwin |
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304a986
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There were hardly any coloured people in the town I grew up in - how am I to know?' And she hated herself for her next question, but she could not hold it back: 'Don't you think I deserve some credit, for trying to be human, for not being a part of all that, for - walking out?
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James Baldwin |
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ee25b93
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The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass, and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can.
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James Baldwin |
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c10259c
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Let me,' said Cass. 'It's just about the only thing that a poor white woman can still do.' Ida looked at her, and smiled. 'Now, don't you be like that,' she said, 'because you can suffer, and you've got some suffering to do, believe me.' Cass handed the driver a bill. 'You stand to lose everything - your home, your husband, even your children.' Cass sat very still, waiting for her change. She looked like a defiant little girl. 'I'll never g..
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James Baldwin |
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32b7476
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sin is the only heritage of the natural man
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James Baldwin |
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0a3de7b
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Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place; Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power, By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour; Far other aims his heart had learned to prize, More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise.
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James Baldwin |
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69c28f2
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Perhaps he is a fool and a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.
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James Baldwin |
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9bdcff4
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Tell me,' he said, 'what is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. What are they waiting for?
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James Baldwin |
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acc0fba
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this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them...
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James Baldwin |
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0ec5ba2
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People always seem to band together in accordance to a principle that has nothing to do with love, a principle that releases them from personal responsibility. (p. 81)
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love
race
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James Baldwin |
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94f0dfc
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White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this--which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never--the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed. People
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James Baldwin |
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362e4a3
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all men were like this, their thoughts rose no higher, and they lived only to gratify on the bodies of women their brutal and humiliating needs. One
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James Baldwin |
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5c7b5f3
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Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It
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James Baldwin |
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df87d20
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Somebody," said Jacques, "your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour--and in the oddest places!--for the lack of it."
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James Baldwin |
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427008b
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It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and, in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity.
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James Baldwin |
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8d2dad7
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One would never defeat one's circumstances by working and saving one's pennies; one would never, by working, acquire that many pennies, and, besides, the social treatment accorded even the most successful Negroes proved that one needed, in order to be free, something more than a bank account. One needed a handle, a lever, a means of inspiring fear. It was absolutely clear that the police would whip you and take you in as long as they could ..
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James Baldwin |
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d0cd5ec
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I did not intend to allow the white people of this country to tell me who I was, and limit me that way, and polish me off that way. And yet, of course, at the same time, I being spat on and defined and described and limited, and could have been polished off with no effort whatever. Every Negro boy - in my situation during those years, at least - who reaches this point realizes, at once, profoundly, because he wants to live, that he stands..
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James Baldwin |
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b860e14
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large part of her simplicity consisted in determining not to want what she could not have with ease. So
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James Baldwin |
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20ddc69
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The fear that I heard in my father's voice, for example, when he realized that I really I could do anything a white boy could do, and had every intention of proving it, was not at all like the fear I heard when one of us was ill or had fallen down the stairs or strayed too far from the house. It was another fear, a fear that the child, in challenging the white world's assumptions, was putting himself in the path of destruction.
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James Baldwin |
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9c2592c
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White people were, and are, astounded by the holocaust in Germany. They did not know that they could act that way. But I very much doubt whether black people were astounded - at least, in the same way. For my part, the fate of the Jews, and the world's indifference to it, frightened me very much. i could not but feel, in those sorrowful years, that this human indifference, concerning which I knew so much already, would be my portion on the ..
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James Baldwin |
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83eb598
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In a society that is entirely hostile, and, by its nature, seems determined to cut you down - that has cut down so many in the past and cuts down so many every day - it begins to be almost impossible to distinguish a real from a fancied injury. One can very quickly cease to attempt this distinction, and, what is worse, one usually ceases to attempt it without realizing that one has done so.
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James Baldwin |
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adc145b
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In the eeriest way possible, I suddenly had a glimpse of what white people must go through at a dinner table when they are trying to prove that Negroes are not subhuman. I had almost said, after all, "Well, take my friend Mary," and very nearly descended to a catalogue of those virtues that gave Mary the right to be alive. And in what hope? That Elijah and the others would nod their heads solemnly and say, at least, "Well, all right - but..
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James Baldwin |
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17f951b
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It is the responsibility of free men to trust and to celebrate what is constant--birth, struggle, and death are constant, and so is love, though we may not always think so--and to apprehend the nature of change, to be able and willing to change. I speak of change not on the surface but in the depths--change in the sense of renewal. But renewal becomes impossible if one supposes things to be constant that are not--safety, for example, or mon..
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James Baldwin |
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390209d
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To dream and dream, like yonder amber light Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the
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James Baldwin |
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f760283
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She thought of herself as his strength; in a world of shadows, the indisputable reality to which he could always repair. And, again, for all that had come, she could not regret this. She had tried, but she had never been and was not now, even tonight, truly sorry. Where, then, was her repentance? And how could God hear her cry?
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James Baldwin |
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1e0436a
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dared to accept this opportunity, or even to conceive of it as an opportunity. White Americans have thought of it as their shame, and have envied those more civilized and elegant European nations that were untroubled by the presence of black men on their shores. This is because white Americans have supposed "Europe" and "civilization" to be synonyms--which they are not--and have been distrustful of other standards and other sources of vital..
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James Baldwin |