prejudice will always exist. So will sickness and disease, but that scarcely seems sufficient reason for telling our medical scientists to put on their hats, close up their laboratories, and give the spirochetes, bacilli and viruses a free hand.

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

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

in race relations, the single gesture and the single individual are more often than not doomed to failure. Only the group and the long-term, undeviating policy make much headway. ... if you want to make the world a better place, the first thing you must accept is the fact that you cannot transcend your limitations as an individual.

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.

when I spoke of having a drink, it was a euphemism for having a whole flock of them.

Employed as I had been employing it, liquor is a fixative of old patterns.