James Baldwin

"We do not look at the world; we see only what we have been taught to see."

"It is not a question of whether there are white racists; it is a question of what is it that is happening now, and how many white people are willing to do something about it."

"Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does."

"I can accept anything about myself except that I am afraid."

"Extreme changes in one's life do not necessarily involve enormous conscious effort."

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."

"The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose."

"People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become."

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read."

"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."

"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."

"To be sensual is to respect the body and to indulge the senses."

"Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have."

"Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go."

"If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they are real."

"There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now."

"The writers of the world are not made by other writers, they are made by the confrontation between themselves and life."

"Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is growing up."

"Being Black in America is like being left-handed in a right-handed world."

"One cannot deny the powers of silence."

"The question of integration, then, is a personal question."

"Not all of us may die the same but we're all gonna die, and none of us know when."

"The self is not something ready made, but something in continuous creation."

"To ask the question puts one at grave risk."

"Do your work. Night and day. In the same way that you breathe."

"Acceptance is not the same as approval."

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that very existence is an act of rebellion."

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong in the broken places."

"Your crown has been bought and paid for. All you have to do is wear it."

"One must say No to authority or one is functional dead."