...every woman who has any margin of time or money to spare should adopt some one public interest, some philanthropic undertaking,... or some social agitation of reform, and give to that cause whatever time and work she may be able to afford ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Reality has become so absorbing that the streets, the television, and the journals have confiscated the public interest and people... are no longer thirsty for culture on a higher level.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In asking for a voice in the government under which we live, have we been pursuing a shadow for fifty years? In seeking political ...power, are we abdicating that social throne where they tell us our influence is unbounded? No, no! The right of suffrage is no shadow, but a substantial entity that the citizen can seize and hold for his own protection and his country's welfare. A direct power over one's own person and property, an individual opinion to be counted, on all questions of public interest, are better than indirect influence, be that ever so far-reaching.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The saint and poet seek privacy to ends the most public and universal: and it is the secret of culture, to interest the man more i...n his public, than in his private quality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whatever else American thinkers do, they psychologize, often brilliantly. The trouble is that psychology only takes us so far. The... new interest in families has its merits, but it will have done us all a disservice if it turns us away from public issues to private matters. A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The art of the theater--notoriously an "impure" art--seems to be as close to the art of politics as it is to poetry, painting or m...usic. The theater artist, whether actor or playwright, depends on the interest and support of an audience, just as the politician depends upon his constituency. The politician cannot practice his art at all without a grant from his constituency; and so he must first of all woo it. And the theater artist cannot practice his art without real people assembled before a real stage; a theater without an audience is a contradiction in terms. That is why both politics and the theater are necessarily so close to the public mood and the public mind of their times.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The reason artists show so little interest In public freedom is because the freedom... They've come to feel the need of is a kind No one can give them they can scarce attain The freedom of their own material....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »