In general, American social life constitutes an evasion of talking to people. Most Americans don't, in any vital sense, get together; they only do things together.

If it is the great delusion of moralists to suppose that all previous ages were less sinful than their own, then it is the great delusion of intellectuals to suppose that all previous ages were less sick.

Educated people do indeed speak the same languages; cultivated ones need not speak at all.

The American Way is so restlessly creative as to be essentially destructive; the American Way is to carry common sense itself almost to the point of madness.

Many people today don't want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing, They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety.

A perfect conversation would run much less to brilliant sentences than to unfinished ones.

For tens of millions of people [television] has become habit-forming, brain-softening, taste-degrading.