We — mankind — stand at the center of an evolutionary crisis, with a new evolutionary device — our consciousness of the crisis — as our unique contribution.

Maleness in America is not absolutely defined; it has to be kept and re-earned every day, and one essential element in the definition is beating women in every game that both sexes play.

We need every human gift and cannot afford to neglect any gift because of artificial barriers of sex or race or class or national origin.

Many women, particularly young women, have claimed the right to use the most explicit sex terms, including extremely vulgar ones, in public as well as private. But it is men, far more than women, who have been liberated by this change. For now that women use these terms, men no longer need to watch their own language in the presence of women. But is this a gain for women?

I had no reason to doubt that brains were suitable for a woman.

With the exception of the few cases to be discussed in the next chapter, adolescence represented no period of crisis or stress, but was instead an orderly developing of a set of slowly maturing interests and activities.

We grow up never questioning that which is unquestioned around us.