James Baldwin Quotes

On finally naming a problem in the family everyone has avoided:

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

James Baldwin, As Much Truth As One Can Bear

On understanding a coworker who has stopped caring about consequences:

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

James Baldwin, No Name in the Street

On letting a partner see you without the armor:

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

On being scared to let go of a coping habit that no longer serves you:

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Deciding how to parent when your own example matters more than your rules:

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

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Facing a change so total it feels like losing yourself:

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Deciding whether to stay and do the harder work of loving someone:

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.

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

On criticizing an institution you still believe in:

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 Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

On facing the slow cost of choices you kept avoiding:

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply: by the lives they lead.

James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

On resisting the urge to humiliate someone who hurt you:

Whoever debases others is debasing himself.

James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

Deciding whether to let go of a grudge that is costing you more than the person who wronged you:

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated.

James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

On rewriting the rules of an industry you are new to:

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

James Baldwin, Nothing Personal

On finding your voice after a period of being silenced:

The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he, or she, has become a threat.

James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work

On a student questioning the very system that is teaching them:

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 Baldwin, A Talk to Teachers

Deciding whether to return to a place you no longer belong to:

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room

Wishing you could choose who anchors you, and accepting you cannot:

People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, although we may frequently wish that we could.

James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room

Weighing whether pride is worth losing a love over:

Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?

James Baldwin, Another Country