Our age is very cheap and intelligible. Unroof any house, and you shall find it. The well-being consists in having a sufficiency o...f coffee and toast, with a daily newspaper; a well glazed parlor, with marbles, mirrors and centre-table; and the excitement of a few parties and a few rides in a year.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success.... It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Both were predominantly ethical in aim and doctrine; theory of knowledge (logic) and of nature (physics) served rather as the scaf...folding rather than as an integral portion of their philosophic structure, while metaphysics, the kernel of Platonic and Aristotelian speculation, receded altogether into the background.... When we ask as to the nature of the philosophic life, the two schools give widely different answers. To the Stoic, it consists in following virtue, in obedience to an authoritative law of nature or reason; the sage, by subjugating emotion, and by detachment from the restless world of circumstance, disciplines his soul to self-sufficiency and inward independence. To the Epicurean, the good life is that of rational enjoyment of all the satisfactions which the world affords.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To see self-sufficiency as the hallmark of maturity conveys a view of adult life that is at odds with the human condition, a view ...that cannot sustain the kinds of long-term commitments and involvements with other people that are necessary for raising and educating a child or for citizenship in a democratic society.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The myth of self-sufficiency blinds us to the workings of other forces in family life. For families are not now, nor were they eve...r, the self-sufficient building blocks of society, exclusively responsible, praiseworthy, and blamable for their own destiny. They are deeply influenced by broad social and economic forces over which they have little control.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Recognizing that family self-sufficiency is a false myth, we also need to acknowledge that all today's families need help in raisi...ng children. The problem is not so much to reeducate parents but to make available the help they need and to give them enough power so that they can be effective advocates with and coordinators of the other forces that are bringing up their children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the early nineteenth century, the doctrine of self-sufficiency came to apply to families as well as individuals.... The family ...became a special protected place, the repository of tender, pure, and generous feelings (embodied by the mother) and a bulwark and bastion against the raw, competitive, aggressive, and selfish world of commerce (embodied by the father).... In performing this protective task, the good family was to be as self-sufficient as the good man.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He that fancies such a sufficiency in himself that he can live without all the world is greatly mistaken; but he that imagines him...self so necessary that other people cannot live without him is a great deal more mistaken.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
America has a history of political isolation and economic self-sufficiency; its citizens have tended to regard the rest of the wor...ld as a disaster area from which lucky or pushy people emigrate to the Promised Land. Alternatively, they think of other nations as mere showplaces for picturesque scenery, odd flora and fauna and quaint artifacts. The American tourist abroad therefore wears clothes suitable for a trip to a disaster area, or for a visit to a museum or zoo: comfortable, casual, brightly colored, relatively cheap: not calculated to arouse envy or pick up dirt. Britain, on the other hand, remains in imagination a world empire. Its citizens go abroad as representatives of the Top Nation, concerned to uphold its reputation and present a good example to lesser races. Britons therefore dress up rather than down for travel, whatever the local conditions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The worthiest man to be known, and for a pattern to be presented to the world, he is the man of whom we have most certain knowledg...e. He hath been declared and enlightened by the most clear-seeing men that ever were; the testimonies we have of him are in faithfulness and sufficiency most admirable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »