James A. Baldwin
James A. Baldwin
James A. "Jim" Baldwinwas an American football player, track athlete, coach of football, basketball, and baseball, and college athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at Rhode Island State College—now the University of Rhode Island, the University of Maine, Trinity College in Durham, North Carolina—now Duke University, Lehigh University, and Wake Forest University, compiling a career college football record of 41–32–14. Baldwin was also the head basketball coach at the same five schools, amassing a career college basketball...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth2 August 1924
CountryUnited States of America
These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which were now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone.
Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?" "Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel." "And when you have waited—-has it made you sure?
There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees.
Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their 'vital interests' are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the 'sanctity' of human life, or the 'conscience' of the civilized world.
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.
The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.
Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.
Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.
No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.