James Baldwin

You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't, you die. Or you don't die, but you don't live.

The challenge is to make the world safe for diversity, not for sameness.

The American ideal, after all, is to be so rich that you don't have to deal with anybody.

It is a fact that I am a writer. It is not a fact that I am a Negro writer.

To be a Negro in this country is really to be an invisible man.

I was not a Negro. I was a Black man. And my country is not a country. It is a state of mind.

It is a great shock to discover that the world is not as it is supposed to be when you're a child.

I’ve been trying for some time to make people realize that America is not an innocent country.

When you're trying to destroy a human being, it's very important to tell him that he's a nigger.

You can't be a writer and be in the world and not be political. You can't be a writer and be in the world and not be a human being.

I don't know what most white people in this country feel. I can only speak for myself, and I can say that I have loved very few white people in my life.

The price one pays for refusing to play the game is that one is not heard.

I think the great problem in America is that we've never been able to face the fact that we were founded on a lie.

All of us know, whether we say it or not, that life is a battle.

It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is soporific. I have never felt sleepy after eating lettuce, but I have often felt sleepy after listening to a lecture.

People who believe that they are white, and act on that belief, have to remain in a state of moral arrest.

It is not a racial problem. It is a problem of humanity.

The world is not a safe place. It never was.

One can scarcely be so private as to be unaware of what is happening in the world.

If you don't know what you're talking about, you're talking about yourself.