The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.
James A. BaldwinIt is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own: in the face of one's victim, one sees oneself.
James A. BaldwinAny real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
James A. BaldwinConfronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.
James A. BaldwinI love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright.
James A. Baldwin