Americans, more than most people, believe that history is the result of individual decisions to implement conscious intentions. Fo...r Americans, more than most people, history has been that.... This sense of openness, of possibility and autonomy, has been a national asset as precious as the topsoil of the Middle West. But like topsoil, it is subject to erosion; it requires tending. And it is not bad for Americans to come to terms with the fact that for them too, history is a story of inertia and the unforeseen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves--and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not... to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The one conclusive argument that has at all times discouraged people from drinking a poison is not that it kills but rather that i...t tastes bad.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The existence of good bad literature--the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one's intellect simp...ly refuses to take seriously--is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about colored women, and if colored men get their rig...hts, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I'm for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We call the intention good which is right in itself, but the action is good, not because it contains within it some good, but beca...use it issues from a good intention. The same act may be done by the same man at different times. According to the diversity of his intention, however, this act may be at one time good, at another bad.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A plane is a bad place for an all-out sleep, but a good place to begin rest and recovery from the trip to the faraway places you'v...e been, a decompression chamber between Here and There. Though a plane is not the ideal place really to think, to reassess or reevaluate things, it is a great place to have the illusion of doing so, and often the illusion will suffice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My family's lives were not on television, not in books, not even comic books. There was a myth of the poor in this country, but it... did not include us, no matter how hard I tried to squeeze us in. There was an idea of the good poor--hard-working, ragged but clean, and intrinsically honorable. I understood that we were the bad poor ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »