The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs... from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was part of the Texas ritual. We're rich as son-of-a-bitch stew but look how homely we are, just as plain-folksy as Grandpappy ...back in 1836. We know about champagne and caviar but we talk hog and hominy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man with lantern: Who are you? Captain: The Flying Cloud. 220 days out of New York and 50 days trying to find your blasted ha...rbor. Man with lantern: Nobody asked you to come. Captain: Got anything in this hog-end of the world except fog? Man with lantern: Sure, we've got gold, fountains of gold.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places, if the typist is as attractively ma...de up as the daughter of her employer, if the Negro owns a Cadillac, if they all read the same newspaper, then this assimilation indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment are shared by the underlying population.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As for the peasant populations of a great part of the world, they aren't so much anxious as hungry. They aren't anxious about whet...her they will get a salary raise, or which of the three colleges of their choice they will be admitted to, or whether to buy a Ford or Cadillac, or whether the kind of TV set they want is too expensive. They are hungry, cold and, in many parts of the world, they dread that local warfare, bandits, political coups may endanger their homes, their meager livelihoods and their lives. But surely they are not anxious. For anxiety, as we have come to use it to describe our characteristic state of mind, can be contrasted with the active fear of hunger, loss, violence and death. Anxiety is the appropriate emotion when the immediate personal terror--of a volcano, an arrow, the sorcerer's spell, a stab in the back and other calamities, all directed against one's self--disappears.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
America is no place for an artist: to be an artist is to be a moral leper, an economic misfit, a social liability. A corn-fed hog ...enjoys a better life than a creative writer, painter, or musician. To be a rabbit is better still.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,... Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even under the most perfect Social Democracy we should, without Communism, still be living like hogs, except that each hog would g...et his fair share of grub.... Whilst we are hogs, let us at least be well-fed, healthy, reciprocally useful hogs, instead of--well, instead of the sort we are at present.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The rush to California ... and the attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation to ...it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society! And that is called enterprise! I know of no more startling development of the immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living. The philosophy and poetry and religion of such a mankind are not worth the dust of a puffball. The hog that gets his living by rooting, stirring up the soil so, would be ashamed of such company. If I could command the wealth of all the worlds by lifting my finger, I would not pay such a price for it.... What a comment, what a satire, on our institutions! The conclusion will be, that mankind will hang itself upon a tree.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »