The American dream was not, at least at the beginning, a rags-to-riches type of narrow materialism.

It is not the misuse of power that is evil; the very existence of power is an evil.

The great crime of our time, says Vonnegut, was to do too much good secretly, too much harm openly.

Innocence and optimism have one basic failing: they have no fundamental depth.

Technology and production can be great benefactors of man, but they are mindless instruments, and if undirected they careen along with a momentum of their own. In our country, they pulverize everything in their path - the landscape, the natural environment.

The corporate state is an immensely powerful machine, ordered, legalistic, rational, yet utterly out of human control, wholly and perfectly indifferent to any human values.

The presumed causes of Americas troubles can be summed up simply: the evils of unlimited competition, and abuses by those with economic power.