James Baldwin

The world is before you, and you need not take it, or suffer it, for what it is. You can also make it what it will be.

It is not a racial problem. It is a problem of the way in which people are treated.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.

The power of the white world is in the fact that it is able to make people believe that they are white.

I often wonder what it is they think is going to happen when they die. I mean, they’re so busy trying to live, they don’t have time to die.

The great difficulty, and that which makes the American Negro's experience unique, is that he has been forced to make his journey alone.

It is a terrible thing to see a man that you know to be a man reduced to a thing.

The future of the country is in the hands of the young people, and they know it.

Artists are here to disturb the peace.

The precisely articulated lie is more dangerous than the blatant one.

To be absolutely without hope is to be absolutely without fear.

It is only when a man is able to face his own death that he can face his own life.

The future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country.

I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.

The American ideal, after all, is to be as much like an American as possible.

The world is not a pleasant place to be without someone to love.

If I am not what I’ve been told I am, then I’m not what you think I am.

The great thing about being an artist is that you are allowed to make mistakes.

The world is full of people who are trying to tell you who you are, but you have to decide for yourself.

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 moment of waking to the moment of sleep.