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.
- Topic: Justice, Power
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from James Baldwin
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.
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.
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.
Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.
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My experience has shown me that we win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.
The first requisite of civilization is that of justice.
There is but one thing of real value—to cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst of lying and unjust men.
Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.
Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?
Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If all people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth.
Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither person nor property will be safe.
Wherever there is injustice, war, discrimination against women, gays and the disadvantaged, I did my best to show up and exert moral persuasion.
If the machine of government is of such a nature that requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
Conceit spoils the finest genius… and the great charm of all power is modesty.
The resources, advantages, and the powers of the American people are very great, and they have, consequently, succeed to equally great responsibilities.
Put yourself in a state of mind where you say to yourself, "Here is an opportunity for me to celebrate like never before, my own power, my own ability to get myself to do whatever is necessary.
He who does not desire power is fit to hold it.
The day will soon come when I will show the world that the transmission of power and speech without the aid of any wires is possible.
The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.
