James Arthur Baldwin citáty

strana 6

„Láska nezačíná a nekončí tak, jak si myslíme. Láska je boj, láska je válka, láska je dospívání.“

„Ne vše, čemu čelíme, lze změnit. Ale nic se nedá změnit, dokud se s tím nesetkáte.“

„Svoboda není něco, co může být komukoliv darováno. Svoboda je něco, co si lidé vezmou, a lidé jsou natolik svobodní nakolik chtějí být.“

„Děti nikdy nebyly dobré v poslouchání starších, ale nikdy neselhaly v jejich nápodobě.“

„Ukázalo se, že peníze jsou přesně jako sex. Když jste je neměli, nemysleli jste na nic jiného, a když jste je měli, mysleli jste na jiné věci.“

„Každý, kdo se někdy potýkal s chudobou, ví, jak nesmírně nákladné je být chudý.“

„Ani láska ani hrůza člověka nezaslepují: to, co ho zaslepuje, je lhostejnost.“

„Člověk nemůže upírat lidskost jiným, aniž ochuzuje tu vlastní.“

„Lidem jde mnohem snáze plakat než se měnit.“

“Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty — necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.”

“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.”

“At the rate things are going here, all of Africa will be free before we can get a lousy cup of coffee.”

“I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others.”

“When the South has trouble with its Negroes — when the Negroes refuse to remain in their "place" — it blames "outside agitators" and "Northern interference." When the nation has trouble with the Northern Negro, it blames the Kremlin.”

“Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it's true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”

“Words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.”

“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.”

“Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say.”

“He was silent for a long while. Then: 'You do, sometimes, remind me of the kind of man who is tempted to put himself in prison in order to avoid being hit by a car.'”

“Maybe everything bad that happens to you makes you weaker, and so you can stand less and less.”

“One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found — and it is found in terrible places. … For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”