In my later years I have sought to become simpler, straighter and purer in my handling of the language. I've had many writing hero...es, writers who have influenced me. Of the ones still alive, I can think of E.B. White. I certainly admire the pure, crystal stream of his prose. When I was very young as a sportswriter I knowingly and unashamedly imitated others. I had a series of heroes who would delight me for a while and I'd imitate them--Damon Runyon, Westbrook Pegler, Joe Williams.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My weary limbs are scarcely stretched for repose, before red dawn peeps into my chamber window, and the birds in the whispering le...aves over the roof, apprise me by their sweetest notes that another day of toil awaits me. I arise, the harness is hastily adjusted and once more I step upon the tread-mill.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No people can more exactly interpret the inmost meaning of the present situation in Ireland than the American Negro. The scheme is... simple. You knock a man down and then have him arrested for assault. You kill a man and then hang the corpse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Histories of the world omitted China; if a Chinaman invented compass or movable type or gunpowder we promptly "forgot it" and name...d their European inventors. In short, we regarded China as a sort of different and quite inconsequential planet.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are certain books in the world which every searcher for truth must know: the Bible, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Origin ...of Species, and Karl Marx's Capital.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at lea...st, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If there is anybody in this land who thoroughly believes that the meek shall inherit the earth they have not often let their prese...nce be known.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line--the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in A...sia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »