A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
James A. Baldwin

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
James A. Baldwin

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.
James A. Baldwin

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
James A. Baldwin

Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours.
James A. Baldwin

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
James A. Baldwin

Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.
James A. Baldwin

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
James A. Baldwin

Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.
James A. Baldwin

Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.
James A. Baldwin


Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
James A. Baldwin

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.
James A. Baldwin

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
James A. Baldwin

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
James A. Baldwin

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
James A. Baldwin

I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.
James A. Baldwin

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.
James A. Baldwin

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
James A. Baldwin

It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
James A. Baldwin

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
James A. Baldwin