For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.

The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.

We have to risk a nuclear war in order to escape capitulation to Communism. For all I know, we may stumble into this terrible war.

Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.

The old prose writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience; while, among us, prose is invariably written for the eye alone.

Now when the historic religions give trivial answers to these very tragic questions of our day, when an evangelist says, for instance, we mustn't hope for a summit meeting, we must hope in Christ without spelling out what this could mean in our particular nuclear age. This is the irrelevant answer, when another Evangelist says if America doesn't stop being selfish, it will be doomed. This is also a childish answer because nations are selfish and the question about America isn't whether we will be selfish or unselfish, but will we be sufficiently imaginative to pass the Reciprocal Trade Acts.

What is so funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously. Laughter is the same and healthy response to the innocent foibles of men; and even to some which are not innocent.