We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us.

Youth is a time when we find the books we give up but do not get over.

At the bottom of at least popular Marxism there has always been a kind of disgust with humanity as it is and a perfect faith in humanity as it is to be.

Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.

This desire to fashion, to shape, a self and a life has all but gone from a contemporary culture whose emphasis, paradoxically enough, is so much on self.

It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it.

Reasons for not keeping a notebook: 1) the ambiguity of the reader