In Fast-moving, Progress-conscious America, The Consumer Expects

In Our World Of Big Names, Curiously, Our True Heroes Tend To Be Anonymous. In This Life Of Illusion And Quasi-illusion, The Person Of Solid Virtues Who Can Be Admired For Something More Substantial Than His Well-knownness Often Proves To Be The Unsung Hero: The Teacher, The Nurse, The Mother, The Honest Cop, The Hard Worker At Lonely, Underpaid, Unglamorous, Unpublicized Jobs.

Our Attitude Toward Our Own Culture Has Recently Been Characterized By Two Qualities, Braggadocio And Petulance. Braggadocio - Empty Boasting Of American Power, American Virtue, American Know-how - Has Dominated Our Foreign Relations Now For Some Decades. Here At Home - Within The Family, So To Speak - Our Attitude To Our Culture Expresses A Superficially Different Spirit, The Spirit Of Petulance. Never Before, Perhaps, Has A Culture Been So Fragmented Into Groups, Each Full Of Its Own Virtue, Each Annoyed And Irritated At The Others.

We Must Abandon The Prevalent Belief In The Superior Wisdom Of The Ignorant.

. . . The Messiness Of Experience, That May Be What We Mean By Life.

The Mind Is A Vagrant Thing ... Thinking Is Not Analogous To A Person Working In A Laboratory Who Invents Something On Company Time. Answering Criticism That The Book For Which He Won A Pulitzer Prize Was Written In The Years He Had Been Employed At The Smithsonian. He Specified That Did Not Write On The Premises There, But Only At Home Outside Of Working Hours.