Quote #40

You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.

More from James Baldwin

  1. I have never seen myself as a spokesman. I am a witness. In the church in which I was raised you were supposed to bear witness to the truth…
  2. The celebrity never sees himself. I have some idea what I'm doing on that stage; above all, I have some idea what sustains me on that stage…
  3. I knew Richard [Wright] and I loved him. [...] I was not attacking him; I was trying to clarify something for myself.
  4. When the South has trouble with its Negroes - when the Negroes refuse to remain in their 'place' - it blames 'outside agitators' and 'North…
  5. The brutal truth is that the bulk of white people in American never had any interest in educating black people, except as this could serve …
  6. Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to trans…
  7. It's no credit to this enormously rich country that there are more oppressive, less decent governments elsewhere. We claim superiority of o…
  8. In Boston, when they shit on you, they hand you a towel - so that you can can wipe their ass.

All James Baldwin quotes