James Baldwin

The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

I am not a category. I am a writer.

The greatest joy in life is to be able to tell the truth.

The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you can alter, even a millimeter the way people see reality, then you can change the world.

It is not possible to be an American and not be a racist. You have to work at it.

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.

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.

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

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 not a question of how much you can love, but how much you can bear.

People who believe that they are white, and people who believe that they are black, and people who believe that they are some other color, are all, equally, deluded.

The world is before you, and you need not take it, or suffer it, as it is, but can remake it, and remake yourself.

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

The future is now. It was now a long time ago. We are always living in the future.

One can only face in others what one can face in oneself.

The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you've got to find your own way to live and nobody can tell you how.

It is only when a man is able to give himself, that he can begin to live.

Color is not a human or personal reality; it is a political reality.