In April 1917 the illusion of isolation was destroyed, America came to the end of innocence, and of the exuberant freedom of bache...lor independence. That the responsibilities of world power have not made us happier is no surprise. To help ourselves manage them, we have replaced the illusion of isolation with a new illusion of omnipotence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental fo...rces of his own psyche. This is the World Power that vastly exceeds all other powers on earth. The Age of Enlightenment, which stripped nature and human institutions of gods, overlooked the God of Terror who dwells in the human soul.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life is a search after power: and this is an element with which the world is so saturated,--there is no chink or crevice in which ...it is not lodged,--that no honest seeking goes unrewarded.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am aghast to find myself in such a position of power over two other people. Their father and I have them in thrall simply by hav...ing produced them. We have the power to make them feel good or bad about themselves, which is the greatest power in the world. Ours will not be the only influence, but it is the earliest, the most ubiquitous, and potentially the most pernicious. Lovers and friends will make them blossom and bleed, but they may move on to other lovers and friends. We are the only parents they will have.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power, or those who still be...lieve that language is "only words" and that an old language is good enough for our descriptions of the world we are trying to transform.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Your small hands, precisely equal to my own-- only the thumb is larger, longer--in these hands... I could trust the world, or in many hands like these, handling power-tools or steering-wheel or touching a human face ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The British are a self-distrustful, diffident people, agreeing with alacrity that they are neither successful nor clever, and only... modestly claiming that they have a keener sense of humour, more robust common sense, and greater staying power as a nation than all the rest of the world put together.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »