Until now when we have started to talk about the uniqueness of America we have almost always ended by comparing ourselves to Europe. Toward her we have felt all the attraction and repulsions of Oedipus

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

It is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to remake the world.

The traveler used to go about the world to encounter the natives. A function of travel agencies now is to prevent this encounter.

Beware of charisma . . . Representative Men; was Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1850 phrase for the great men in a democracy . . . Is there some common quality among these Representative Men who have been most successful as our leaders? I call it the need to be authentic-or, as our dictionaries tell us, conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance or belief. While the charismatic has an uncanny outside source of strength, the authentic is strong because he is what he seems to be.

The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.

The computer can help us find what we know is there. But the book remains our symbol and our resource for the unimagined question and the unwelcome answer.