787 Quotes by James Baldwin

To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.

The burden of his salvation seemed to be on me and I could not endure it.

The world tends to trap you in the role you play and it is always extremely hard to maintain a watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is.

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

Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover’s war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real.

Love is like the lightning, and your maturity is signaled by the extent to which you can accept the dangers and the power and the beauty of love.

But it is part of the business of the writer – as I see it – to examine attitudes, to go beneath the surface, to tap the source.

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.

I wish to God I may die if I don’t love you. There ain’t no sky above us if I don’t love you.