I Didn't Go To School

I Spend A Good Deal Of Time Wondering How We Will Seem To The People Who Come After Us. This Is Not An Idle Interest, But A Deliberate Attempt To Strengthen The Power Of That "other Eye," Which We Can Use To Judge Ourselves.

I Think Novelists Perform Many Useful Tasks For Their Fellow Citizens, But One Of The Most Valuable Is This: To Enable Us To See Ourselves As Others See Us.

When I Became Political And Communist, It Was Because They Were The Only People I Had Ever Met Who Fought The Color Bar In Their Lives.

This Is A Time When It Is Frightening To Be Alive, When It Is Hard To Think Of Human Beings As Rational Creatures. Everywhere We Look We See Brutality, Stupidity, Until It Seems That There Is Nothing Else To Be Seen But That--a Descent Into Barbarism, Everywhere, Which We Are Unable To Check. But I Think That While It Is True There Is A General Worsening, It Is Precisely Because Things Are So Frightening We Become Hypnotized, And Do Not Notice--or If We Notice, Belittle--equally Strong Forces On The Other Side, The Forces, In Short, Of Reason, Sanity And Civilization.

Is There Any Delight As Great As The Child's Discovering Ability?