“...when the black populations of the world have a future, so will the Western nations have a future-and not till then. But the terrible probability is that the Western populations, struggling to hold on to what they have stolen from their captives, and unable to look into their mirror will precipitate a chaos throughout the world which, if it does not bring life on this planet to an end, will bring about a racial war such as the world has never seen, and for which generations yet unborn will curse our names forever.”
James Baldwin“If you know from whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations on where you can go.”
James Baldwin“Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.”
James Baldwin“When he was dead I realized that I had hardly ever spoken to him. When he had been dead a long time I began to wish I had. It seems to be typical of life in America, where opportunities, real and fancied, are thicker than anywhere else on the globe, that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.”
James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son“You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything.”
James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son“But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.”
James Baldwin“The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.”
James Baldwin“An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.”
James Baldwin“We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.”
James Baldwin“I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.”
James Baldwin“We take our shape it is true within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth and yet it is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed.”
James Baldwin