James Baldwin
"The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen ... Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world."
84 Quotes
"The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen ... Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world."
"إن الشاعر أو الثوري يضطلع بمهمة تبيان الضرورة، ولكن ما لم يدركها الناس بأنفسهم، فلن يتحقق شيء. قد لا يتم الأمر بغير الشاعر، لكنه قطعاً لا يتم بغير الشعب. غالباً ما تسوء العلاقة بين الشاعر والشعب، ومع ذلك فكل منهما لا غنى له عن الآخر. يدرك الشاعر ذلك قبل الشعب. أما الشعب، فغالباً ما يدركه بعد رحيل الشاعر؛ ولكن لا ضير في ذلك. فالمهم هو إنجاز عملك، وعملك هو تغيير العالم."
James Baldwin
"The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers."
"إن غاية الفن هي كشف الأسئلة التي حجبتها الأجوبة."
James Baldwin
"I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all."
"أنا ما صاغني الزمان والظروف والتاريخ، هذا مؤكد، ولكني أيضًا أعمق من ذلك بكثير. وهكذا كلنا."
James Baldwin
Notes of a Native Son
"People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them."
"البشر أسرى التاريخ، والتاريخ أسير فيهم."
James Baldwin
"All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up."
"كل فن هو ضرب من الاعتراف، مباشر أو موارب. وكل فنان، إن أراد البقاء، يجد نفسه مرغماً في النهاية على سرد القصة كاملة؛ على تقيؤ لوعة الروح."
James Baldwin
"It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind."
"يكاد يكون من المحال أن يصبح المرء مثقفاً في بلد"
James Baldwin
"“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”"
"لعل الوطن ليس مكانًا، بل هو مجرد حالة لا رجعة فيها."
James Baldwin
Giovanni’s Room
"But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power."
"إن العلاقة بين الأخلاق والقوة دقيقة للغاية، لأن القوة بلا أخلاق لا تلبث أن تفقد جوهرها."
James Baldwin
"The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly."
"الجنوب آية في الجمال، لكن حسنه يورث الحزن؛ فالحياة التي يحياها أهله هنا، والتي عاشوها، قبيحة إلى حدٍّ مؤلم."
James Baldwin
"We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours."
"لقد مررنا جميعًا بتجربة اكتشاف أن ردود أفعالنا، وربما حتى أفعالنا، قد جحدت معتقدات ظنناها راسخة فينا."
James Baldwin
"An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience."
"تتكون الهوية، فيما يبدو، من الكيفية التي يواجه بها المرء تجربته ويستثمرها."
James Baldwin
"We take our shape it is true within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth and yet it is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed."
James Baldwin
"It is a great shock at the age of 5 or 6 to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian."
James Baldwin
"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."
James Baldwin
"Most people in action are not worth very much and yet every human being is an unprecedented miracle."
James Baldwin
"Children have never been very good at listening to their elders but they have never failed to imitate them."
James Baldwin
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