James Baldwin
American writer and civil rights activist (1924 to 1987); author of the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, the essay collections Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time, and plays and poems.
From the book The Fire Next Time21 korrents
James Baldwin did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsBut it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsIt is the innocence which constitutes the crime.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Our reading
A young Black American was expected to make peace with mediocrity, not to aspire to excellence
Their wordsYou were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsKnow whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Our reading
The truly terrible thing is that Black Americans are the ones who must accept white Americans
Their wordsThe really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them.
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Their wordsPlease try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsTo act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.
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Their wordsFor this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.
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Their wordsYou know, and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free.
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Their wordsBut the Negro's experience of the white world cannot possibly create in him any respect for the standards by which the white world claims to live. His own condition is overwhelming proof that white people do not live by these standards.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsWhoever debases others is debasing himself.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsLove takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsBut what was the point, the purpose, of my salvation if it did not permit me to behave with love toward others, no matter how they behaved toward me?
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsWhite people cannot, in the generality, be taken as models of how to live.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsTo be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Our reading
The idea of God is only of use if it makes us larger, freer and more loving; otherwise discard it
Their wordsIf the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsEverything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsBut time has passed, and in that time the Christian world has revealed itself as morally bankrupt and politically unstable.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Our reading
Their wordsFreedom is hard to bear.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Our reading
Life is tragic simply because time passes and each of us will one day see our last sunset
Their wordsLife is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
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Their wordsPerhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.
↗The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013 edition)books.google.com All 21 from this book
The line under a date fills as the words age, a quarter at a time: past a month, six months, a year, and three years. Empty means said within the last month; full, more than three years ago. It says when, not whether it still holds — a change of mind is marked on the claim itself.
Dashed means we only know the words existed by that date; they may be older.