The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.
James A. Baldwin

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.
James A. Baldwin

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
James A. Baldwin

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love.
James A. Baldwin

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.
James A. Baldwin

The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
James A. Baldwin

The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.
James A. Baldwin

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did - which was to hide.
James A. Baldwin

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.
James A. Baldwin

There is a "sanctity" involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
James A. Baldwin

There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
James A. Baldwin

Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.
James A. Baldwin

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.
James A. Baldwin

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.
James A. Baldwin

To 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 making of bread.
James A. Baldwin

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.
James A. Baldwin

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.
James A. Baldwin

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.
James A. Baldwin

You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.
James A. Baldwin