It is strange how long we rebel against a platitude until suddenly in a different lingo it looms up again as the only verity.

The life-history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.

The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural.

Our national experience in Americanizing millions of Europeans whose chief wish was to become Americans has been a heady wine which has made us believe, as perhaps no nation before us has ever believed, that, given the slimmest chance, all peoples will pattern themselves upon our model.

In world history, those who have helped to build the same culture are not necessarily of one race, and those of the same race have not all participated in one culture.

A man's indebtedness is not virtue; his repayment is. Virtue begins when he dedicates himself actively to the job of gratitude.

It is my necessary breath of life to understand and expression is the only justification of life that I can feel without prodding.