James Baldwin

"Love is a practice, not a feeling."

"The safety of the powerful depends on the docility of the powerless."

"Patience is the master of all things."

"It is certain that as the human being grows older and more mature, he becomes more and more himself."

"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."

"The universe bends toward those who bend with kindness."

"What is happening now must shake us, and keep us shaking."

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

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

"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 perpetual challenge of the artist is to create work which is not merely a reflection of reality but an interpretation of it."

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

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

"Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be."

"To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time."

"The mind of the Negro is being shaped by the literature he reads."

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

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

"The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don't see."

"Hatred is just a crutch for ignorance."

"The writer is necessarily the voice of the voiceless and the conscience of the people."

"People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction."

"One cannot conceive of a valid reason why a man should devote himself to art unless he believes in some way he can make the world a better place."

"The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim."

"Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind."

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

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

"Try to be nobody but yourself, for all the ways in which you try to be anybody else is much wasted energy."

"I cannot imagine a human being more disabled by fear than a black American can be in this country."

"It is impossible to be here and not remember the man who lived here so recently."