Quotes from baldwin james iv

The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no moral standards in the world at all.

People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy.

We had crossed from death into what certainly sounded like life. And not only did it sound like life, it looked like life; and not only did it look like life, it looked like a particular life, a life which was a particular reproach to me.

The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately.

Whenever he was uncomfortable -- which was often -- his arms and legs seemed to stretch to monstrous proportions and he handled them with bewildered loathing, as though he had been afflicted with them.

You begin to see that you yourself, innocent, upright you, have contributed and do contribute to the misery of the world. Which will never end because we're what we are.

And the applause functions, then, in part, to pacify, narcotize, the resulting violent and inescapable discomfort.

And then they walked through the town, in which not even a cat seemed to be moving; and everywhere they walked, the cathedral was watching them.

Bigger dreams of some black man who will weld all blacks together into a mighty fist.