The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even bellig...erence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To grant woman an equality with man in the affairs of life is contrary to every tradition, every precedent, every inheritance, eve...ry instinct and every teaching. The acceptance of this idea is possible only to those of especially progressive tendencies and a strong sense of justice, and it is yet too soon to expect these from the majority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... not only have we exploited them physically and economically to bring ease to our bodies and our purses, but also we have explo...ited them emotionally to bring us many sublimated satisfactions. Our relationship with Negroes is a many-stringed instrument upon which we play melodies to replenish all the empty places in our hearts.... The parent-child relationship is almost consciously acted out, with the obedience, seeming respect, and acceptance by "our Nigras" going far toward soothing heartaches for the rebellion, arrogance, and rejection we must endure as our real children seize their own lives from us in adolescence. Even the reverse, the child-parent role, is sometimes filled, as we play the part of babyhood helplessness, satisfying immature longings to be waited on and taken care of.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... one of the blind spots of most Negroes is their failure to realize that small overtures from whites have a large significance ...... I now realize that this feeling inevitably takes possession of one in the bitter struggle for equality. Indeed, I share it. Yet I wonder how we can expect total acceptance to step full grown from the womb of prejudice, with no embryo or infancy or childhood stages.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What side of American life is not touched by this antithesis? What explanation of American life is more central or more illuminati...ng? In everything one finds this frank acceptance of twin values which are not expected to have anything in common: on the one hand, a quite unclouded, quite unhypothetical assumption of aesthetic theory ("high ideals"), on the other a simultaneous acceptance of catchpenny realities. Between university ethics and business ethics, between American culture and American humour, between Good Government and Tammany, between academic pedantry and pavement slang, there is no community, no genial middle ground. The very accent of the words "Highbrow" and "Lowbrow" implies an instinctive perception that this is a very unsatisfactory state of affairs. For both are used in a derogatory sense. The "Highbrow" is the superior person whose virtue is admitted but felt to be an inept unpalatable virtue; while the "Lowbrow" is a good fellow one readily takes to, but with a certain scorn for him and all his works.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The reason I'm in this business, I assume all performers are--it's "Look at me, Ma!" It's acceptance, you know--"Look at me, Ma, l...ook at me, Ma, look at me, Ma." And if your mother watches, you'll show off till you're exhausted; but if your mother goes, Ptshew!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nothing, neither acceptance nor prohibition, will induce a child to stop swearing overnight. Teach your child respect for himself ...and others, that profanity can hurt, offend, and disgust, and you'll be doing the best you can...And save your parental giggling over mispronounced curses for after the children's bedtime.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The acceptance of a theory as true does involve a personal choice in a way that a law does not. Different people do differ about t...heories; they can choose whether or no they will believe them; but people do not differ about laws; there is no personal choice; universal agreement can be forced. Again, if we look at the history of science, we shall find that the great advances in theory are more closely connected with the names of the great men than are the advances in law. Every important theory is associated with some man whose scientific work was notable apart from that theory; either he invented other important theories or in some way he did scientific work greatly above the average. On the other hand there are a good many well-known laws which are associated with the names of men who, apart from those particular laws, are practically unknown; they discovered one important law, but they have no claim to rank among the geniuses of science. That fact seems to indicate that a greater degree of genius is needed to invent true theories than to discover true laws.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Cats of all kinds weave in and out of the text; Burroughs has clearly taken to them in a big way in his old age and seems torn bet...ween a fear they will betray him into sentimentality and a resigned acceptance that a man can't be ironic all the time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It cannot in the opinion of His Majesty's Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some r...isk of terminological inexactitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »