The Englishman wants to be recognized as a gentleman, or as some other suitable species of human being, the American wants to be considered a good guy.

One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much real shame as well.

Once you have money, you can quite truthfully affirm that money isn’t everything.

Ours is the country where, in order to sell your product, you don’t so much point out its merits as you first work like hell to sell yourself.

Ours must be the first age whose great goal, on a nonmaterial plane, is not fulfillment but adjustment; and perhaps just such a goal has served as maladjustment’s weapon.

In general, American social life constitutes an evasion of talking to people. Most Americans don’t, in any vital sense, get together; they only do things together.

The trouble with us in America isn’t that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to Advertising copy.

Today’s competitiveness, so much imposed from without, is exhausting, not exhilarating; is unending-a part of one’s social life, one’s solitude, one’s sleep, one’s sleeplessness.

A great maxim of personal responsibility and mature achievement: “Do it yourself” is now the enthroned cliche for being occupied with nonessentials.

The test of interesting people is that subject matter doesn’t matter.