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

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

Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.
James A. Baldwin

The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
James A. Baldwin

Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours.
James A. Baldwin

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
James A. Baldwin

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
James A. Baldwin

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.
James A. Baldwin

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
James A. Baldwin

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
James A. Baldwin

Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.
James A. Baldwin

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
James A. Baldwin

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.
James A. Baldwin

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
James A. Baldwin

The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.
James A. Baldwin

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.
James A. Baldwin

The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.
James A. Baldwin

I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.
James A. Baldwin

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.
James A. Baldwin

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.
James A. Baldwin

A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
James A. Baldwin

The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.
James A. Baldwin

The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.
James A. Baldwin

No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.
James A. Baldwin

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
James A. Baldwin

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.
James A. Baldwin