democracy produces both heroes and villains, but it differs from a fascist state in that it does not produce a hero who is a villain.

The only way not to worry about the race problem is to be doing something about it yourself. When you are, natural human vanity makes you feel that now the thing is in good hands.

The idea is that inside every human being, however unprepossessing, there is a glorious, talented, and overwhelmingly attractive personality. Nonsense. Inside each of us is a mess of unruly, primitive impulses, and these can sometimes, under the strenuous self-discipline and dedication of art, result in notable creativity.

Democracy makes many taxing demands on its practitioners, but suspension of the intelligence is not one of them.

in the comparatively short time between my childhood and my daughter's, the business society has ceased urging people to produce and is now exerting its very considerable influence to get them to consume.

Identity is not found, the way Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bulrushes. Identity is built.

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.