787 Quotes by James Baldwin

I think it's better to know that you don't know, that way you can grow with the mystery as the mystery grows in you. But, these days, of course, everybody knows everything, that's why so many people are so lost.

It doesn't do to look too hard into this mystery, which is as far from being simple as it is from being safe. We don't know enough about ourselves. I think it's better to know that you don't know, that way you can grow with the mystery as the mystery grows in you. But, these days, of course, everybody knows everything, that's why so many people are so lost.

Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore

It’s not really a mystery except it’s always a mystery about people.

For, you see, he had found his center, his own center, inside him: and it showed. He wasn’t anybody’s nigger. And that’s a crime, in this fucking free country. You’re suppose to be somebody’s nigger. And if you’re nobody’s nigger, you’re a bad nigger: and that’s what the cops decided when Fonny moved downtown.

People love different people in different ways.

Of course, I must say that I don't think America is God's gift to anybody--if it is, God's days have got to be numbered. That God these people say they serve--and do serve, in ways that they don't know--has got a very nasty sense of humor. Like you'd beat the shit out of Him, if He was a man. Or: if you were.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connect me with all the people that were alive, or who had ever been alive.

Privately, we cannot stand our lives and dare not examine them; domestically, we take no responsibility for (and no pride in) what goes on in our country; and internationally, for millions of people, we are an unmitigated disaster.