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 point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read novels for info...rmation about areas of life we don't know--Nigeria, South Africa, the American army, a coal-mining village, coteries in Chelsea, etc. We read to find out what is going on. One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel--the quality of philosophy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is part of the educator's responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of t...he experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Few countries have produced such arrogance and snobbishness as America. Particularly is this true of the American woman of the mid...dle class. She not only considers herself the equal of man, but his superior, especially in her purity, goodness, and morality. Small wonder that the American suffragist claims for her vote the most miraculous powers. In her exalted conceit she does not see how truly enslaved she is, not so much by man, as by her own silly notions and traditions. Suffrage can not ameliorate that sad fact; it can only accentuate it, as indeed it does.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If one reads a newspaper only for information, one does not learn the truth, not even the truth about the paper. The truth is that... the newspaper is not a statement of contents but the contents themselves; and more than that, it is an instigator.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The mystical nature of American consumption accounts for its joylessness. We spend a great deal of time in stores, but if we don't... seem to take much pleasure in our buying, it's because we're engaged in the acts of sacrifice and self-definition. Abashed in the presence of expensive merchandise, we recognize ourselves ... as supplicants admitted to a shrine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[The Declaration of Independence] meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered ...by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What then is the relation of law to morality? Law cannot prescribe morality, it can prescribe only external actions and therefore ...it should prescribe only those actions whose mere fulfillment, from whatever motive, the state adjudges to be conducive to welfare. What actions are these? Obviously such actions as promote the physical and social conditions requisite for the expression and development of free--or moral--personality.... Law does not and cannot cover all the ground of morality. To turn all moral obligations into legal obligations would be to destroy morality. Happily it is impossible. No code of law can envisage the myriad changing situations that determine moral obligations. Moreover, there must be one legal code for all, but moral codes vary as much as the individual characters of which they are the expression. To legislate against the moral codes of one's fellows is a very grave act, requiring for its justification the most indubitable and universally admitted of social gains, for it is to steal their moral codes, to suppress their characters.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...I think the Americans are the only people who have good beds. I consider the American bedroom unparalleled for freshness, comfo...rt, and cleanliness. It is worth going all over Europe in order to come home to one's own bed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »