Success does not implant bad characteristics in people. It merely steps up the growth rate of the bad characteristics they already had.

the conversation whipped gaily around the table like rags in a high wind.

Folklore is a collection of ridiculous notions held by other people, but not by you and me.

There are ... other business societies - England, Holland, Belgium and France, for instance. But ours [the United States] is the only culture now extant in which business so completely dominates the national scene that sports, crime, sex, death, philanthropy and Easter Sunday are money-making propositions.

the psychological attitudes which are indispensable in the American market place are disastrous to family life. Family life ... requires yieldingness, generosity, sympathy, altruism, tenderness-all the qualities, in fact, which lead straight to bankruptcy. ... the American family is tragically out of gear with the profit structure which has mushroomed up around it.

If you embark on a project as magnificent in concept as the brotherhood of man, it is foolish not to anticipate difficulties of proportionate magnificence.

Equality is an unconscious assumption, and if you feel you are treating someone as an equal, then you are not doing it.