Top 15 Quotes by 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.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.

It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

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.