# Quote — James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

> It demands great force and great cunning continually to assault the mighty and indifferent fortress of white supremacy, as Negroes in this country have done so long. It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.

- Author: [James Baldwin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-baldwin.md)
- Book: [The Fire Next Time](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-baldwin/the-fire-next-time.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Baldwin#%22Letter_from_a_Region_of_My_Mind%22) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-baldwin/the-fire-next-time/it-demands-great

## More from this book

> Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-baldwin/the-fire-next-time/perhaps-the-whole.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-baldwin/the-fire-next-time/christianity-has-operated.md)

> Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-baldwin/the-fire-next-time/whatever-white-people.md)