The improved American highway system ... isolated the American-in-transit. On his speedway ... he had no contact with the towns wh...ich he by-passed. If he stopped for food or gas, he was served no local fare or local fuel, but had one of Howard Johnson's nationally branded ice cream flavors, and so many gallons of Exxon. This vast ocean of superhighways was nearly as free of culture as the sea traversed by the Mayflower Pilgrims.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our attitude toward our own culture has recently been characterized by two qualities, braggadocio and petulance. Braggadocio--empt...y 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.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Until now when we have started to talk about the uniqueness of America we have almost always ended by comparing ourselves to Europ...e. Toward her we have felt all the attraction and repulsions of Oedipus.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
While the focus in the landscape of Old World cities was commonly government structures, churches, or the residences of rulers, th...e landscape and the skyline of American cities have boasted their hotels, department stores, office buildings, apartments, and skyscrapers. In this grandeur, Americans have expressed their Booster Pride, their hopes for visitors and new settlers, and customers, for thriving commerce and industry.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Disagreement produces debate but dissent produces dissension. Dissent (which come from the Latin, dis and sentire) means originall...y to feel apart from others. People who disagree have an argument, but people who dissent have a quarrel. People may disagree and both may count themselves in the majority. But a person who dissents is by definition in a minority. A liberal society thrives on disagreement but is killed by dissension. Disagreement is the life blood of democracy, dissension is its cancer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Advertising could not be understood as simply another form of salesmanship. It aimed at something new--the creation of consumption... communities.... The primary argument of the salesman was personal and private: this hat is perfect for you (singular). His focus was on the individual; he succeeded when he cajoled, flattered, managed, and overwhelmed a particular buyer's ego. The primary argument of the advertisement was public and general: This hat is perfect for you (plural). While the salesman persuaded the customer that the item was peculiarly suited to his unique needs, the advertisement persuaded groups of buyers that the item was well suited to the needs of all persons in the group. The advertisement succeeded when it discovered, defined, and persuaded a new community of consumers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the small town each citizen had done something in his own way to build the community. The town booster had a vision of the futu...re which he tried to fulfill. The suburb dweller by contrast started with the future--with a shopping center for twice the population, with a school building already built, with churches constructed, with parks and playgrounds and swimming pools. These were as essential to building a suburb as the prematurely grand hotel had been to building a city in the wilderness. In large developments where the developer had a plan, and even in the smaller developments, there was a new kind of paternalism: not the quasi-feudal paternalism of the company town, nor the paternalism of the utopian ideologue. This new kind of paternalism was fostered by the American talent for organization, by the rising twentieth century American standard of living, and by the American genius for mass production. It was the paternalism of the market place. The suburban developer, unlike the small-town booster, seldom intended to live in the community he was building. For him community was a commodity, a product to be sold at a profit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The contrast between Leonardo and Michelangelo is an allegory of the arts of modern times. Leonardo left copious notes of his obse...rvations on nature and the world around him, but little about his feelings or his inner life. Michelangelo, in his letters, his poetry, in biographies by his friends and students Vasari and Condivi, in conversations with Francisco de Hollanda and others, left us vivid revelations and eloquent chronicles of himself. Leonardo, the self-styled "disciple of experience," was a hero of the effort to re-create the world from the shapes and forms and sensations out there. But Michelangelo, prophet of the sovereign self, found mysterious resources within. These two greatest figures of Italian Renaissance art dramatized a modern movement from craftsman to artist. If Leonardo could be called the Aristotle--practical-minded organizer and surveyor of experience--Michelangelo would be the Plato, seeker after the perfect idea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most important American addition to the World Experience was the simple surprising fact of America. We have helped prepare man...kind for all its later surprises.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The American experience stirred mankind from discovery to exploration. From the cautious quest for what they knew (or thought they... knew) was out there, into an enthusiastic reaching to the unknown. These are two substantially different kinds of human enterprise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »