James Baldwin
"...when the black populations of the world have a future, so will the Western nations have a future-and not till then. But the terrible probability is that the Western populations, struggling to hold on to what they have stolen from their captives, and unable to look into their mirror will precipitate a chaos throughout the world which, if it does not bring life on this planet to an end, will bring about a racial war such as the world has never seen, and for which generations yet unborn will curse our names forever."
89 Quotes
"...when the black populations of the world have a future, so will the Western nations have a future-and not till then. But the terrible probability is that the Western populations, struggling to hold on to what they have stolen from their captives, and unable to look into their mirror will precipitate a chaos throughout the world which, if it does not bring life on this planet to an end, will bring about a racial war such as the world has never seen, and for which generations yet unborn will curse our names forever."
James Baldwin
"People can cry much easier than they can change."
James Baldwin
"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive."
James Baldwin
"It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind."
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."
James Baldwin
"The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in."
James Baldwin
"Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go."
James Baldwin
"Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."
James Baldwin
"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
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