Quote #42

When the South has trouble with its Negroes - when the Negroes refuse to remain in their 'place' - it blames 'outside agitators' and 'Northern interference.' When the nation has trouble with the Northern Negro, it blames the Kremlin.

More from James Baldwin

  1. 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…
  2. Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to trans…
  3. You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.
  4. In Boston, when they shit on you, they hand you a towel - so that you can can wipe their ass.
  5. 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…
  6. Life is more important than art, that's what makes art important.
  7. I knew Richard [Wright] and I loved him. [...] I was not attacking him; I was trying to clarify something for myself.
  8. Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is battle, love is a war; love is growing up.

All James Baldwin quotes