787 Quotes by James Baldwin

Some moments in a life, and they needn’t be very long or seem very important, can make up for so much in that life; can redeem, justify, that pain, that bewilderment, with which one lives, and invest one with the courage not only to endure it, but to profit from it; some moments teach one the price of human connection: if one can live with one’s own pain, then one respects the pain of others, and so, briefly, but transcendentally, we can release each other from pain.

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.

The price of the liberation of the white people is the liberation of the blacks – the total liberation, in the cities, in the towns, before the law, and in the mind.

Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.

Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?

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

Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a fraud. No other city is so spitefully incoherent.

The interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.

A man is not a man until he’s able and willing to accept his own vision of the world, no matter how radically this vision departs from that of others.