James Baldwin - Quodid

About

Picture of James Baldwin

James Arthur Baldwin (né Jones; August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain has been ranked by Time magazine as one of the top 100 English-language novels. His 1955 essay collection Notes of a Native Son helped establish his reputation as a voice for human equality. His 1965 debate with William F. Buckley is regarded as one of the most influential debates. Baldwin was an impactful public figure and orator, especially during the civil rights movement in the United States.

Quotes from James Baldwin

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.

—James Baldwin

alone art artist

Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word love here not merely in a personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace—not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.

—James Baldwin

love life fear knowledge happiness growth daring

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

—James Baldwin

children elders imitation

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 Baldwin in The Fire Next Time

pain hatred reasons

There is no music like that music, no drama like the drama of the saints rejoicing, the sinners moaning, the tambourines racing, and all those voices coming together and crying holy unto the Lord.… I have never seen anything to equal the fire and excitement that sometimes, without warning, fill a church, causing the church, as Leadbelly and so many others have testified, to "rock.

—James Baldwin

sin music church excitement drama rock and roll

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

knowledge safety identity change world

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

—James Baldwin

knowledge work ugliness commerce

I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.

—James Baldwin

self-knowledge travel Europe

I'm optimistic about the future, but not about the future of this civilization. I'm optimistic about the civilization which will replace this one.

—James Baldwin

optimism future civilization

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

—James Baldwin

You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.

—James Baldwin

Perhaps 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, the only fact we have.

—James Baldwin

war reality beauty religion facts death blood

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

—James Baldwin

If 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.

—James Baldwin

Books

James Baldwin has the following books quoted on Quodid:

The Fire Next Time