James Baldwin Quotes

There was too much hatred in the world; it was manifestly as dangerous as gunpowder, yet people let it lie about, in the way of ignition.

I think our society today, the negativity is at the forefront, so you see all the people that have outrage about this or that.

White people are getting more and more angry every day, Donald Trump was elected that the mask of civility - like an onion peeling - is being peeled off. Now naked hatred, not only in word but in deed, is being openly shown to us.

I'm not sure everybody agrees with me. I guess a lot of people don't. We are living in a time that's as evil as any time that there has ever been.

But the forces of evil have not abdicated. The malevolent ghosts of hatred are resurgent with a fury and a boldness that are as astounding as they are nauseating: ethnic conflicts, religious riots, anti-Semitic incidents here, there, and everywhere. What is wrong with these morally degenerate people that they abuse their freedom, so recently won?

You'd have to give people free rein to attack the local councils or to destroy the school authorities, like the students who break up the repression in the universities. It's already happening, though people have got to get together more.

When people help one another in sin and transgression, they finish by hating each other.

How long do politicians have to keep on promising heaven and delivering hell before people catch on and stop getting swept away by rhetoric?

You are afraid of the people unrestrained-how ridiculous!

Heaven is purpose, principle, and people. Purgatory is paper and procedure. Hell is rules and regulations.

Did you ever consider that LSD was really one of the most dangerous drugs ever manufactured because the people who took it turned into yuppies?

I don't really want people looking to me for inspiration. I just want to be a sign along the way that points toward Heaven.

Ordinarily, even when people become religious, they go on thinking in terms of having - possessing heaven or possessing the pleasures of heaven - but still they go on thinking in terms of having. Their heaven is nothing but their projected desire of having everything. All that they have missed here they would like to have in the after-life. But it is the same desire.

Economic markets are collapsing. People all over the world are suffering and people afraid. What happens when peep are afraid? They become intolerant.

At various periods in American history, people get pretty rambunctious when it comes to our democratic debate.

A song ain't why people kill cops.

I suspect that democracy is not viable in a technologically advanced society. Free people wield too much ability to destroy.

There's a lot of despair in the USA. Young people are afraid for the future.

Rumors are spread by jealous people

If there's a message to pass to people, I'd say that it's normal to be different from others, it's good to differ from one another, and we'd better look at ourselves first before we start criticising someone who looks, acts, speaks different or has a different skin colour. I'd like to continue, even at a minimal level, what John Lennon had started. If I could do as much as a bit of what he did, if I could contribute to the elimination of hatred among us, that would be a great deal.

The ones that hate you most tend to be the people you know

Catholic theology accounts for the fact that there's evil in the world. People say, well, how could God let this happen. Well, what God did was set the mechanism in motion and then allow people to do the best they can under the circumstances that they're dealt in order to gain grace and get into heaven.

When people begin to lose hope, there's bound to be explosions.

Greece and the Greek people have recently had to deal with the harshest consequences of the global and European economic crisis. As an economy and as a society, we have had to experience a program of disastrous austerity which made the problems more acute instead of resolving them.

There are parallels between the 1960s and now, because during the 1960s, people were being slaughtered, their lives were being taken, there was violence, greed, drugs were rising - just all of this. And my uncle was saying, you've got to come back to faith, hope and love. Now, you get the translation and say faith, hope and charity - faith, hope and love.