Americans expect to eat and stay thin, to be constantly on the move and ever more neighborly ... to revere God and be God.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.

America has been a land of dreams. A land where the aspirations of people from countries cluttered with rich, cumbersome, aristocratic, ideological pasts can reach for what once seemed unattainable. Here they have tried to make dreams come true. Yet now... we are threatened by a new and particularly American menace. It is not the menace of class war, of ideology, of poverty, of disease, of illiteracy, or demagoguery, or of tyranny, though these now plague most of the world. It is the menace of unreality.

Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.

Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives- from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango - with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to-date scripts for actors on the tourists' stage.

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.

We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.