Sisters is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest ...relationship.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Chief among our gains must be reckoned this possibility of choice, the recognition of many possible ways of life, where other civi...lizations have recognized only one. Where other civilizations give a satisfactory outlet to only one temperamental type, be he mystic or soldier, business man or artist, a civilization in which there are many standards offers a possibility of satisfactory adjustment to individuals of many different temperamental types, of diverse gifts and varying interests.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The negative cautions of science are never popular. If the experimentalist would not commit himself, the social philosopher, the p...reacher, and the pedagogue tried the harder to give a short- cut answer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A society which is clamoring for choice, which is filled with many articulate groups, each urging its own brand of salvation, its ...own variety of economic philosophy, will give each new generation no peace until all have chosen or gone under, unable to bear the conditions of choice. The stress is in our civilization.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other cult...ure should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The prophet who fails to present a bearable alternative and yet preaches doom is part of the trap that he postulates. Not only doe...s he picture us caught in a tremendous man-made or God-made trap from which there is no escape, but we must also listen to him day in, day out, describe how the trap is inexorably closing. To such prophecies the human race, as presently bred and educated and situated, is incapable of listening. So some dance and some immolate themselves as human torches; some take drugs and some artists spill their creativity in sets of randomly placed dots on a white ground.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The institution of marriage in all societies is a pattern within which the strains put by civilization on males and females alike ...must be resolved, a pattern within which men must learn, in return for a variety of elaborate rewards, new forms in which sexual spontaneity is still possible, and women must learn to discipline their receptivity to a thousand other considerations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People in America, of course, live in all sorts of fashions, because they are foreigners, or unlucky, or depraved, or without ambi...tion; people live like that, but Americans live in white detached houses with green shutters. Rigidly, blindly, the dream takes precedence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Each home has been reduced to the bare essentials--to barer essentials than most primitive people would consider possible. Only on...e woman's hands to feed the baby, answer the telephone, turn off the gas under the pot that is boiling over, soothe the older child who has broken a toy, and open both doors at once. She is a nutritionist, a child psychologist, an engineer, a production manager, an expert buyer, all in one. Her husband sees her as free to plan her own time, and envies her; she sees him as having regular hours and envies him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »