James Arthur Baldwin (1924–87) was an American novelist and social critic. His essays, as collected in Notes of a Native Son, explore intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America. Some of Baldwin’s essays are book-length, including The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street, and The Devil Finds Work. An unfinished manuscript, Remember This House, was expanded and adapted for cinema as the Academy Award–nominated documentary film I Am Not Your Negro.
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A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
—James Baldwin
Topics: Education
For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.
—James Baldwin
There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
—James Baldwin
Topics: Time, Future, The Present, Forgiveness, Challenges, Present
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
—James Baldwin
Topics: Society, Children, Example, Listening
People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.
—James Baldwin
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