One of the less dismaying aspects of race relations in the United States is that their improvement is not a matter of a few people having a great deal of courage. It is a matter of a great many people having just a little courage.

As one might expect in a society with mass communications and mass markets, the pseudo-ethic says that whatever is popular, is right. Where the traditional ethic derives its sanction from the superiority of a few, the pseudo-ethic derives its sanction from the inferiority of a great many. The pseudo-ethic is keyed, not to the spiritually gifted, but to the spiritually ungifted.

Life itself, however, flows and is sequential and punishes those who try to compartmentalize it.

Some persons talk simply because they think sound is more manageable than silence.

children are an embarrassment to a business civilization. A business society needs children for the same reason that a nomadic or a pastoral society needs them - to perpetuate itself. Unfortunately, however, children are of no use to a business society until they have almost reached physical maturity.

Living in England, provincial England, must be like being married to a stupid but exquisitely beautiful wife.

The feelings, myths and prejudices about the Negro American which now seem so valid and real to some of our white contemporaries will take their place on the shelf along with the belief in witches and the notion that the earth is the center of the solar system.  Nobody knows as yet whether the future [of the race situation] is hopeless. All we know is that it can be made hopeless, if enough people choose to consider it so.