1924 - 1987
James Baldwin was an American novelist, playwright, and activist known for his works exploring race, sexuality, and identity in the United States. His notable works include "Go Tell It on the Mountain," "The Fire Next Time," and "Notes of a Native Son." Baldwin was a prominent voice in the civil rights movement and an influential figure in literature and social commentary.
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.
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.
Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, this is me and the damned world can go to hell.
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.
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.
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
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 questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
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.