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James Baldwin

Thursday 5th of March 2026

Blacks The American commonwealth chooses to overlook what Negroes are never able to forget: they are not really  considered a part of it. Like Aziz in A Passage to India or Topsy in Uncle Tom's Cabin, they know that white people, whatever their love of justice, do not love them. James Baldwin, “Journey to Atlanta” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Blacks A black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac. James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket © 2017 Kwiple.com
Blacks You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time   © 2017 Kwiple.com
Change Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.  James Baldwin © 2017 Kwiple.com
Children Children do not like ghettos. It takes them nearly no time to discover exactly why they are there. James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Christianity He began with a quotation to the effect that, when the Christian arrived in Africa, he had the Bible and the African had the land; but that, before long, the African had the Bible and the Christian had the land. James Baldwin, quoting a Jamaican priest, “Princes and Powers” © 2016 Kwiple.com
Cities Urban renewal means Negro removal. James Baldwin © 2019 Kwiple.com
Freedom Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be. One hasn't got to have an enormous military machine in order to be unfree when it's simpler to be asleep, when it's simpler to be apathetic, when it's simpler, in fact, not to want to be free, to think that something else is more important. James Baldwin, “Notes for a Hypothetical Novel” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Gays The sexual question comes after the question of color; it's simply one more aspect of the danger in which all black people live. I think white gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, into a society in which they were supposed to be safe. The anomaly of their sexuality puts them in danger, unexpectedly. James Baldwin © 2015 Kwiple.com
Guns When the Israelis pick up guns, or the Poles or the Irish or any white man in the world says, “Give me liberty or give me death,” the entire white world applauds. When a black man says exactly the same thing, word for word, he is judged a criminal and treated like one and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad nigger so there won't be any more like him. James Baldwin, The Dick Cavett Show, 1968 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Hatred The Negro, facing a Jew, hates, at bottom, not his Jewishness but the color of his skin. It is not the Jewish tradition by which he has been betrayed but the tradition of his native land. But just as a society must have a scapegoat, so hatred must have a symbol. Georgia has the Negro and Harlem has the Jew. James Baldwin, “The Harlem Ghetto” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Heaven Heavenly witnesses are a tricky lot, to be used by whoever is closest to Heaven at the time. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time   © 2017 Kwiple.com
Poverty Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor; and if one is a member of a captive population, economically speaking, one's feet have simply been placed on the treadmill forever. James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse One is in the impossible position of being unable to believe a word one's countrymen say. “I can't believe what you say,” the song goes, “because I see what you do” James Baldwin, “A Report from Occupied Territory” © 2018 Kwiple.com
Race The root of the white man's hatred is terror, a bottomless and nameless terror, which focuses on the black, surfacing, and concentrating on this dread figure, an entity which lives only in his mind. But the root of the black man's hatred is rage, and he does not so much hate white men as simply wants them out of his way, and, more than that, out of his children's way. James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Segregation De facto segregation means that Negroes are segregated but nobody did it. James Baldwin © 2021 Kwiple.com
Selfie Being in the pulpit was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion was worked. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Times   © 2017 Kwiple.com
Selfie A boy like me with all his handicaps, real and fancied, could not have survived in obscurity. James Baldwin © 2017 Kwiple.com
Selfie I want to be an honest man and a good writer. James Baldwin © 2017 Kwiple.com
Selfie It's really something, to be a legend,  unbearable. James Baldwin © 2017 Kwiple.com
Selfie My father said, during all the years I lived with him, that I was the ugliest boy he had ever seen, and I had absolutely no reason to doubt him. James Baldwin © 2019 Kwiple.com
Sex “Integration,” said a very light Negro to me in Alabama, “has always worked very well in the South, after the sun goes down.” “It's not miscegenation,” said another Negro to me, “unless a black man's involved.” James Baldwin, “Nobody Knows My Name: A Letter from the Sourth” © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in order to console me for the wretchedness of blacks. But an itemized account of the American failure does not console me and it should not console anyone else. James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Whites The only thing white people have that black people need, or should want, is power—and no one holds power forever. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time   © 2017 Kwiple.com
 
Whites The world is white no longer, and it will never be white again. James Baldwin, “Stranger in the Village” © 2017 Kwiple.com