James Baldwin Quotes

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.

James Baldwin

• Music
• America
• Understanding

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Quotes to Explore

• Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.

  

  E. B. White
  • Time
  • Great
  • Funny

• I took my acting very seriously. I did over 40 films, and naturally, some of them were called B-movies because the woman was at the top of the billing. Women couldn't star in their own movies.

  

  Mamie Van Doren
  • Women
  • Star
  • Woman

• Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed.

  

  Walt Whitman
  • Old
  • Fools
  • Behind

• Should the time come when the county family will be taken away, then the parish will feel for some time like a mouth from which a molar has been drawn - there will be a vacancy that will cause unrest and discomfort.

  

  Sabine Baring-Gould
  • Time
  • Family
  • Taken

• Tragedy is like strong acid - it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.

  

  D. H. Lawrence
  • Truth
  • Strong
  • Gold

• It is fairly well-known what has been behind that climate change denial in America: vast sums pumped into an ignorance industry by the oil and gas lobbies.

  

  Naomi Wolf
  • America
  • Change
  • Ignorance

• A guitar riff played on a piano doesn't come close to the purity of it being played on a guitar but I faked it enough to get by.

  

  Barry Mann
  • Enough
  • Guitar
  • Piano

• When I was 13, I started working in a nightclub with Ray Charles. That's the greatest school in the world, the school of the streets. Ray taught me how to read in Braille. He was only two years older than me, but it was like he was 100 years older.

  

  Quincy Jones
  • World
  • School
  • Greatest

• Wal-mart... do they like make walls there?

  

  Paris Hilton
  • Like
  • Make
  • Walls

• That's why I'm really trying to produce my own stuff. This film was so good, because I produced it myself, and developed it, and made it with New Line, which is a smaller studio, so I was in control of a lot of stuff that I wasn't in control of for my other films.

  

  Ted Demme
  • Good
  • Trying
  • Why

• Black women, whose experience is unique, are seldom recognized as a particular social-cultural entity and are seldom thought to be important enough for serious scholarly consideration.

  

  Barbara Smith
  • Important
  • Women
  • Experience

• If I didn't have a girlfriend, I'd have 10 girls at the studio, and they would make me not rap.

  

  Young Thug
  • Me
  • Rap
  • Girlfriend

• The Bible says, 'Judge not lest ye be judged.' Our lives are supposed to be hospitals, not courtrooms.

  

  Tammy Faye Bakker
  • Judge
  • Bible
  • Our Lives

• 'Islamism' itself is such a broad and nearly meaningless word as used by the mainstream Western press, including everything from Turkey's AKP party to al Qaeda.

  

  Pankaj Mishra
  • Party
  • Everything
  • Press

• If you're a designer, there's got to be some films that you've seen that have inspired you creatively. There's no escaping that.

  

  Ozwald Boateng
  • You
  • Inspired
  • Got

• Any reaction is better than none.

  

  Gavin Rossdale Bush
  • Better
  • Reaction
  • Than

• There are things that bother me. I try not to let them, but they do.

  

  Usain Bolt
  • Me
  • Things
  • Try

• A man with a million dollars can be as happy nowadays as though he were rich.

  

  Ward McAllister
  • Happy
  • Man
  • Rich

• You've got to make the most of where you are. Then, when you're somewhere else, you've got to have the ability to fulfill that.

  

  Anthony Charles Edwards
  • Ability
  • Somewhere Else
  • Where You Are

• It may be the optimist in me, but I think America has a uniquely powerful and capacious glue internally. The American identity has always been ethnically and religiously neutral, so within one generation you have Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Jamaican-Americans - they feel American. It's a huge success story.

  

  Amy Chua
  • May
  • American
  • America

• The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad.

  

  Elon Musk
  • Future
  • Value
  • Inspiration

• I love singing Christmas carols. I know every harmony to every music-hall Christmas song.

  

  Zooey Deschanel
  • Music
  • Love
  • Song

• It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.

  

  James Baldwin
  • Music
  • America
  • Understanding