“If you don't know what happened behind you, you've no idea of what is happening around you.”

— James Baldwin, Interview with Studs Terkel, 1961

About James Baldwin

1924 – 1987

American novelist and essayist, author of "Notes of a Native Son".

“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

“This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.”

“Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.”

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”

Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

“He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.”

Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”