Talk:James Baldwin

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Unsourced

If you can provide a precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to James Baldwin.

• Americans suffer from an ignorance that is not only colossal, but sacred.
• Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the battle field.
• Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
• In Boston, when they shit on you, they hand you a towel — so that you can can wipe their ass.
  • [1] TV on the Radio interview in which Kyp Malone attributes this quote to James Baldwin.
• Life is more important than art, that's what makes art important.
  • This resembles a statement Baldwin made in the 1961 interview with Studs Terkel above.
• Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.
• Rage cannot be hidden, it can only be dissembled. This dissembling deludes the thoughtless, and strengthens rage and adds, to rage, contempt.
• We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.
• When the book comes out it may hurt you -- but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.
• Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings.

This article cites The Price of the Ticket: Collected Non-fiction, 1948-1985 for the quote, "Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up." -Draeth Darkstar (talk) 22:03, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Misattributed

"We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist." --often attributed to James Baldwin, but it appears to have originated with a Twitter account called Son of Baldwin. Nareek (talk) 16:22, 18 December 2019 (UTC)