10 James Baldwin Quotes That Still Rang True Today

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

2. “You have to decide who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.”

3. “Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.”

4. “Everybody’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy.”

“The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality. “

5. “To be a negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”

6. “Ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”

7. “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.”

8. “I was not born to be what someone said I was. I was not born to be defined by someone else.”

“But by myself, and myself only.”

9. “I’ve always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.”

10. “The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side”