Americans are not only a less homogenous population than we were when we were 3 million ex-colonists, but we're less educated. On top of that, we have constant misinformation and manipulation by media.

What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?

The United States is my subject, but as Hawthorne once wrote, "the United States are suited for many admirable purposes, but not to live in."

A superficial education would be worse than none. But a full education would open every man's eyes to the nature of human existence.

In a nation that has developed to a high art advertising, the creator who refuses to advertise himself is immediately suspected of having no product worth selling.

Most lives are spent putting on and taking off masks.

Yet in a society of conflicting interests the only democratic way in which matters can be improved is through politics, and politics means the compromising of extremes in order to achieve that notorious half loaf which the passionate and the outraged never find sufficient.