James Baldwin Quotes

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

James Baldwin

• People
• Experience
• Responsibility

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Quotes to Explore

• I read part of it all the way through.

  

  Samuel Goldwyn
  • Way
  • Funny
  • Through

• Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand with a grip that kills it.

  

  Rabindranath Tagore
  • Truth
  • Hand
  • Grip

• I'm not a power person. I like everyone to be on an equal footing.

  

  Jack Nicholson
  • Power
  • Everyone
  • Equal

• You've just got to sing, do some kind of singing every day. Early mornings and cold weather can mess with that. I drink special teas with cayenne pepper, but I think you're psyching yourself out, really.

  

  Aaron Neville
  • Day
  • Singing
  • Cold

• If Turkey wants to join Europe, it will have to become a European country, and that might take a long time.

  

  Salman Rushdie
  • Time
  • Long
  • Country

• I'd always put on little shows at home, but when I was 11, I did a community event in Woodford, where anyone could go. You had three days of vocal training and performed your song at the end. I sang 'I Say a Little Prayer.' It's a tough song to sing but they gave me the confidence to go for it and belt it out.

  

  Naomi Scott
  • Home
  • Song
  • Community

• For me, it's actually really hard to write about my real experience. Like to do a Taylor Swift. You know what I mean? It's so brave to actually write about things that happened and things you wanna get off your chest, but I'm not really there yet.

  

  Zara Larsson
  • Real
  • Experience
  • Know

• Commitment and credibility go hand in hand.

  

  Zbigniew Brzezinski
  • Hand
  • Commitment
  • Go

• If you really want something, it's nerve-racking, but at the same time, I try not to stress myself out about it too much because there are also so many arbitrary things that go into being cast for something - you know, like the color of your eyes, all these things that are kind of out of my control.

  

  Laura Harrier
  • Time
  • Control
  • Eyes

• Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.

  

  Vaclav Havel
  • Free
  • Peace
  • Independent

• Entrenched scriptural literalism is, in my opinion, completely out of touch with reality.

  

  Malcolm Boyd
  • Reality
  • Opinion
  • Touch

• To make the child in your own image is a capital crime, for your image is not worth repeating. The child knows this and you know it. Consequently you hate each other.

  

  Karl Shapiro
  • Hate
  • Know
  • Child

• If the colonists hadn't rejected British militarism and the massive financial burden of maintaining the British military, America wouldn't exist.

  

  Rachel Maddow
  • America
  • Military
  • Financial

• If the artists would just keep hammering away - unify, stick together - then music will become the king again, which is what it should be.

  

  Garth Brooks
  • Music
  • Together
  • King

• We have to change the kind of free trade deals we sign. We would have to change the absolutely central role of frenetic consumption in our culture. We would have to change the role of money in politics and our political system.

  

  Naomi Klein
  • Money
  • Free
  • Political

• Arab-led Islamic fundamentalism destabilizes nations from Algeria to the Philippines.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Islamic
  • Nations
  • Philippines

• The only history is a mere question of one's struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.

  

  D. H. Lawrence
  • Work
  • Great
  • History

• The body dies, but the spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death.

  

  Ramana Maharshi
  • Death
  • Body
  • Spirit

• I'd rather be biblically correct than politically correct.

  

  Mark Batterson

• The thing about happiness is that it doesnt help you to grow; only unhappiness does that. So I'm grateful that my bed of roses was made up equally of blossoms and thorns. I've had a privileged, creative, exciting life, and I think that the parts that were less joyous were preparing me, testing me, strengthening me.

  

  Lana Turner
  • Life
  • Up
  • Help

• At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgement of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.

  

  H. L. Mencken
  • Together
  • Law
  • Christian

• If you want to run as fast as the men, you've got to train like the men.

  

  Florence Griffith Joyner
  • Men
  • Want
  • Train

• If you operate under the premise that everybody already has some experiences that could be sources of empathy for them, I wonder if there's some process of coaxing people into tapping into that knowledge.

  

  Leslie Jamison
  • People
  • Knowledge
  • Wonder

• The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

  

  James Baldwin
  • People
  • Experience
  • Responsibility