Female animals defending their young are notoriously ferocious and lack the playful delight in combat which characterizes the mock combats of males of the same species. There seems very little ground for claiming that the mother of young children is more peaceful, more responsible, and more thoughtful for the welfare of the human race than is her husband or brother.

Sisters, while they are growing up, tend to be very rivalrous and as young mothers they are given to continual rivalrous comparisons of their several children. But once the children grow older, sisters draw closer together and often, in old age, they become each other's chosen and most happy companions. In addition to their shared memories of childhood and of their relationship to each other's children, they share memories of the same home, the same homemaking style, and the same small prejudices about housekeeping that carry the echoes of their mother's voice.

‎ When a person is born we rejoice, and when they're married we jubilate, but when they die we try to pretend nothing has happened.

The contempt for law and the contempt for the human consequences of lawbreaking go from the bottom to the top of American society.

And as I had my father's kind of mind-which was also his mother's-I learned that the mind is not sex-typed.

I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples - faraway peoples - so that Americans might better understand themselves.

Humanity . . . lies in man's capacity to question the known and imagine the unknown.