it came to me, as we sat there, glumly ordering lunch, that for extremely stupid people anti-Semitism was a form of intellectuality, the sole form of intellectuality of which they were capable. It represented, in a rudimentary way, the ability to make categories, to generalize.

An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished question.

I am for the ones who represent sense, and so was Jane Austen.

For self-realization, a rebel demands a strong authority, a worthy opponent, God to his Lucifer.

In verity we are the poor. This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the thousands and thousands of European peasants and poor townspeople who came here bringing their humanity and their sufferings with them. It is the absence of a stable upper class that is responsible for much of the vulgarity of the American scene. Should we blush before the visitor for this deficiency?

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.