James Baldwin

"Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves."

"Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles"

"The brutal truth is that the bulk of white people in American never had any interest in educating black people, except as this could serve white purposes. It is not the black child's language that is …"

"Perhaps I did not succumb to ideology … because I have never seen myself as a spokesman. I am a witness. In the church in which I was raised you were supposed to bear witness to the truth. Now, later …"

"When one begins looking for influences one finds them by the score. I haven't thought much about my own, not enough anyway; I hazard that the King James Bible, the rhetoric of the store-front church, …"

"The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side."

"If the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it."

"I am beginning to feel like part of a travelling circus."