Academics From The United States

"The person who first moved me and still does is the late African-American author James Baldwin. I was 12 when I read his first book, Go Tell It On the Mountain, about his childhood in Harlem in the Thirties. He nailed the emotions I felt right on the head and I read all his subsequent books."

"I want to conclude by quoting from James Baldwin, a courageous writer who refused to let the hope of democracy die in his lifetime and who offered that mix of politics, passion and courage that deserves not just admiration but emulation. His sense of rage was grounded in a working-class sensibility, eloquence and passion that illuminates a higher standard for what it means to be a public intellectual and an engaged intellectual. His words capture something that is missing from the American cultural and political landscape, something affirmative that needs to be seized upon, rethought, and occupied - as part of both the fight against the new authoritarianism and its cynical, dangerous and cruel practices, and the struggle to reclaim a notion of justice and mutuality that seems to be dying in all of us."

"He named for me the things you feel but couldn't utter... articulated for the first time to white America what it meant to be American and a black American at the same time."

"Out of the innumerable appeals that had been made on my behalf, we selected a representative number both from the United States and abroad. To begin the book, we used James Baldwin's moving letter to me. "Some of us, white and black," he wrote, "know how great a price has already been paid to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new people, an unprecedented nation. If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name. If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own-which it is-and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night." It struck us that the title of the anthology should be If They Come in the Morning."

"The one thing that did excite me during that freshman year was the news that James Baldwin was scheduled to deliver a series of lectures on literature. Since I had first discovered Go Tell It on the Mountain, I read all of Baldwin's writings I could find. When he came to Brandeis, I made sure I captured a front seat. But he had hardly gotten into his lecturing when the news broke that the world was teetering on the edge of the abyss of World War III. The Cuban Missile Crisis had erupted. James Baldwin announced that he could not continue his lectures without contradicting his moral conscience and abdicating his political responsibilities."

"I loved James Baldwin when I was young. Go Tell It on the Mountain is a book I've read several times, with passion. Above all, for me as a West Indian woman, the book had a novel theme in its relationship with God, its reinterpretation of God, and its way of addressing him in a very different language. The book also had something quite universal: a child who was ill-loved and unappreciated by his stepfather. These issues were also present in my consciousness, so I adored Baldwin."

"James Baldwin's 1955 Giovanni's Room and 1962 Another Country dealt with the complicated intersections of sexuality and race through homosexual characters. As early as 1949, in his essay "The Preservation of Innocence," Baldwin directly connected heterosexual hostility toward homosexuals to white hostility toward African Americans. He saw both as a failure of the imagination to connect fully with one's own humanity. He explores this idea in his 1963 The Fire Next Time: "White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this-which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never-the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.""

"James Baldwin was born for truth. It called upon him to tell it on the mountains, to preach it in Harlem, to sing it on the Left Bank in Paris. His honesty and courage would lead him to see truth and to write truth in poetry, drama, fiction, and essay. He was a giant."

"People who get a lot of work done are people who give themselves permission. Look at James Baldwin. He has something like 18 major pieces of work to his name. It's because of Jimmy that I became a writer."

"...the world is present, and the world is not white, and America is not the symbol of civilization. Neither is England. Neither is France. Something else is happening that will engulf them by and by. You, Quincy, will be here, but I'll be gone. It's the only hope the world has-that Western hegemony and civilization be contained. (1988)"

"I am not a black nationalist but some of my best friends are...Why aren't I a black nationalist? Because I don't believe it is enough to be black-one has to be human as well. We did not struggle for four hundred years just to become like the white man". (1985)"

"Change does come, but not when or in the ways we want it to come. George Jackson, Malcolm X-now people all over the world were changed by them. Because they told the secret; now, the secret was out. (“And the secret?”) Put it this way. In 1968, along with Lord Caradon (British Delegate to the United Nations then), I addressed an assembly of the World Council of Churches in Switzerland on "white racism or world community?" When Lord Caradon was asked why the West couldn't break relations with South Africa, he brought out charts and figures that showed that the West would be bankrupt if they did that: the prosperity of the West is standing on the back of the South African miner. When he stands up, the whole thing will be over. (1985)"

"(“How do you assess the results of the war in Vietnam on the American people?”) Americans are terrified. For the first time they know that they are capable of genocide. History is built on genocide. But they can't face it. And it doesn't make any difference what Americans think that they think-they are terrified. (1985)"

"(You seem very troubled but not by death?) JB: Yes, true, but not at all by death. I'm troubled over getting my work done and over all the things I've not learned. It's useless to be troubled by death, because then, of course, you can't live at all. (1984)"

"Perhaps the turning point in one's life is realizing that to be treated like a victim is not necessarily to become one. (1984)"

"I read everything. I read my way out of the two libraries in Harlem by the time I was thirteen. One does learn a great deal about writing this way. First of all, you learn how little you know. It is true that the more one learns the less one knows. I'm still learning how to write. I don't know what technique is. All I know is that you have to make the reader see it. This I learned from Dostoyevsky, from Balzac. (1984)"

"I say a new language. I might say a new morality, which, in my terms, comes to the same thing. And that's on all levels the level of color, the level of identity, the level of sexual identity, what love means, especially in a consumer society, for example. Everything is in question, according to me. One has to forge a new language to deal with it. (1984)"

"There're two things we have to do love each other and raise our children. We have to do that! The alternative, for me, would be suicide. (1984)"

"We are responsible to the future, and not to Chase Manhattan Bank. (1973)"

"To tell you the truth, the results of the civil rights movement to me has nothing to do with civil rights. (I'm talking with hindsight. I might not have said this two years ago.) The one thing it revealed to me was a profound nobility, a real nobility on the part of a whole lot of black people, old and young. There is no other word for it. It was a passionate example. It was doomed to political failure, but that doesn't make any difference. The example will never, never die. And on another level, it exposed white people. Some of them understood it and some of them didn't. Some of them really understood what it meant to have all those kids cattleprodded and hosed and beaten and murdered and chained and castrated. The moral image of a cattleprod against a woman's breast or against a man's testicles. It exposed some things for some people and on the other hand most of the people hid. They did not want to see it and don't see it until today. That's how we have Nixon in the White House and we see this hood Agnew on his way to jail. And then, once again, to keep the nigger in his place, they called it law and order. They brought into office law and order, but I call it the Fourth Reich. I must say, I claim for the black people of America the example of nobility which I have never seen before and no one in this century has seen before. Malcolm was noble. Martin was noble. Medgar was noble and those kids were noble and it exposed an entire country, it exposed an entire civilization. Now we have to take it from there. (1973)"

"(How do you see the role of the artist in general?) JB: The role of the artist is exactly the same role, I think, as the role of the lover. If you love somebody, you honor at least two necessities at once. One of them is to recognize something very dangerous, or very difficult. Many people cannot recognize it at all, that you may also be loved; love is like a mirror. In any case, if you do love somebody, you honor the necessity endlessly, and being at the mercy of that love, you try to correct the person whom you love. (1973)"

"A change, a real change is brought about when the people make a change. The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen. When the people have taken the necessity, when the movement starts moving, then the world moves. Perhaps, it can't be done without the poet, but, it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but, that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world. (1973)"

"What white Americans think is happening in the world and what black people must deal with day by day are very different. (1970)"

"A lot of Negro style-the style of a man like Miles Davis or Ray Charles or the style of a man like myself is based on a knowledge of what people are really saying and on our refusal to hear it. You pick up on the beat, which is much more truthful than words. (1969)"

"recently I went along with a field secretary of the N.A.A.C.P. in Mississippi to investigate a murder that had been hushed up. We rode around through those back roads for hours talking to people who had known the dead man, trying to find out what had happened. And the Negroes talked to us as the German Jews must have talked when Hitler came to power. (1969)"

"the real point is that people like me and Harry Belafonte and even Martin Luther King are not Negro leaders. We're doing our best to find out where the people are and to follow them. (1963)"

"The celebrity never sees himself. I have some idea what I'm doing on that stage; above all, I have some idea what sustains me on that stage. But the celebrity is not exactly Jimmy, though he comes out of Jimmy and Jimmy nourishes that, too. I can see now, with hindsight, that I would've had to become a celebrity in order to survive. A boy like me with all his handicaps, real and fancied, could not have survived in obscurity. I can say that it would have had to happen this way, though I could not see it coming."

"You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble."

"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 on, you wonder what in the world the truth is, but you do know what a lie is."

"I knew Richard Wright and I loved him. [...] I was not attacking him; I was trying to clarify something for myself."

"The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality."

""...but you were never really white in the first place. Nobody is. Nobody has, even, ever wanted to be white, unless they are afraid of being black. But being black is nothing to be afraid of. I knew that before I met you, and I have learned it again, through you. Perhaps being white is not a conceivable condition, but a terrifying fantasy, a moral choice.”"

"It is not merely that the rain falls differently on each of you, for that can be a wonder and a joy: it is that what is rain for the one is not rain for the other."

"This may be why we appear to learn absolutely nothing from experience, or may, in other words, account for our incoherence: memory does not require that we reconstitute the event, but that we justify it."

"without love, pleasure withers quickly, becomes a foul taste on the palate, and pleasure’s inventions are soon exhausted. There must be a soul within the body you are holding, a soul which you are striving to meet, a soul which is striving to meet yours."

"Close up, the person's imperfections matter, but from far away, you see your own."

"Passion is terrifying, it can rock you, change you, bring your head under, as when a wind rises from the bottom of the sea, and you're out there in the craft of your mortality, alone."

"There is a reason, after all, that some people wish to colonize the moon, and others dance before it as before an ancient friend."

"You’re allowed to do anything you want to do, including go steal a pumpkin if you want — anything you want to do."

"As president, I will not accept the argument that says our problem is too many Americans are finding good jobs"

"If you're fully vaccinated, get one more COVID shot—once a year—that's it!"

"I say this as a father of a man and won the Bronze Star, the conspicuous service medal, and lost his life in Iraq."

"Let me start off with two words: Made in America"

"No one fucks with a Biden."

"I’ve spent a lot of time with people in the aftermath of disasters. I have immense gratitude for the first responders and the emergency crews who always show up no matter what. At times like these, Americans come together. They put aside politics, they put aside division, and we come together to help each other. Because we know, if it were us who just lost our homes or a loved one, we’d hope people would show up to help us as well."

"I’m grateful for the brave women and men — federal, state, and local folks working so hard. They’re all working as one team. I hear that from the governor as well as from the federal folks. In the past 24 hours, my administration has approved four more counties in Florida for individual disaster assistance, in addition to the nine counties we had announced yesterday. What that means is: The federal government will cover — is covering every cost — 100 percent of the cost to clear the massive debris left in the wake of the hurricane in these counties. And it all needs to be cleared out for communities to begin the hard work of trying to get back on their feet."

"My message to the people of South Carolina is simple: Please listen to all the warnings and directions from local officials and follow their instructions. And as you all know, the situation in Florida is far more devastating. We’re just beginning to see the scale of that destruction. It’s likely to rank among … the worst in the nation’s history. You have all … it on television. Homes and property wiped out. It’s going to take months, years to rebuild. And our hearts go out to all those folks whose lives have been absolutely devastated by this storm. America’s heart is literally breaking, just watching people — watching it on television. I just want the people of Florida to know we see what you’re going through, and we’re with you. We’re going to do everything we can for you."

"With the devastation caused by Hurricane Ian in Florida and the storm just hours away from hitting South Carolina — I know some parts are already hit — I want to update you on what we’ve done since I last spoke to you on this 24 hours ago. I’ve directed that every possible action be taken to save lives and get help to survivors, because every single minute counts. It’s not just a crisis for Florida. This is an American crisis. We’re all in this together. And I’ve spoken to Governor DeSantis on multiple occasions, as well this morning, as well as mayors and county officials — both Republican and Democrat — from the places most affected. And I spoke with Governor McMaster of South Carolina this morning as well."

"The United States will always promote human rights and the values enshrined in the U.N. Charter in our own country and around the world. Let me end with this: This institution, guided by the U.N. Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is at its core an act of dauntless hope. Let me say that again: It’s an act of dauntless hope. Think about the vision of those first delegates who undertook a seemingly impossible task while the world was still smoldering. Think about how divided the people of the world must have felt with the fresh grief of millions dead, the genocidal horrors of the Holocaust exposed. They had every right to believe only the worst of humanity. Instead, they reached for what was best in all of us, and they strove to build something better: enduring peace; comity among nations; equal rights for every member of the human family; cooperation for the advancement of all humankind. My fellow leaders, the challenges we face today are great indeed, but our capacity is greater. Our commitment must be greater still. So let’s stand together to again declare the unmistakable resolve that nations of the world are united still, that we stand for the values of the U.N. Charter, that we still believe by working together we can bend the arc of history toward a freer and more just world for all our children, although none of us have fully achieved it. We’re not passive witnesses to history; we are the authors of history. We can do this — we have to do it — for ourselves and for our future, for humankind."

"Perhaps singular among this body’s achievements stands the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is the standard by which our forebears challenged us to measure ourselves. They made clear in 1948: Human rights are the basis for all that we seek to achieve. And yet today, in 2022, fundamental freedoms are at risk in every part of our world … But here’s what I know: The future will be won by those countries that unleash the full potential of their populations, where women and girls can exercise equal rights, including basic reproductive rights, and contribute fully to building a stronger economies and more resilient societies; where religious and ethnic minorities can live their lives without harassment and contribute to the fabric of their communities; where the LGBTQ+ community individuals live and love freely without being targeted with violence; where citizens can question and criticize their leaders without fear of reprisal."