Read, read, read. Never stop reading. And when you can't read anymore… write.
- Topic: Education, Learning, Writing
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from James Baldwin
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
The longer I live, the more deeply l learn that love - whether we call it friendship or family or romance is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light.
The only way to live, is knowing you’re going to die. If you're afraid to die, you'll never be able to live.
It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
You write in order to change the world…the world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even but a millimetre the way people look at reality, then you change it.
Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
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Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.
Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.
A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country.
Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.
What signifies knowing the names, if you know not the nature of things?
Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.
The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious; what I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.
The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it continues the true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.
It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling to get adapted to my kind of fooling.
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.
I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.
If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day; it helps. Then, when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.
I kept always two books in my pocket: one to read, one to write in.
If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.