Actually, The Inability Of Any Society To

The Best An American Can Look Forward To Is The Lonely Pleasure Of One Who Stands At Long Last On A Chilly And Inhospitable Mountaintop Where Few Have Been Before, Where Few Can Follow And Where Few Will Consent To Believe He Has Been.

The Truth Is Sometimes A Poor Competitor In The Market Place Of Ideas – Complicated, Unsatisfying, Full Of Dilemmas, Always Vulnerable To Misinterpretation And Abuse.

I Lived, Particularly In Childhood But With Lessening Intensity Right On To Middle Age, In A World That Was Peculiarly And Intimately My Own, Scarcely To Be Shared With Others Or Even Made Plausible To Them. I Habitually Read Special Meanings Into Things, Scenes And Places Qualities Of Wonder, Beauty, Promise, Or Horror For Which There Was No External Evidence Visible Or Plausible To Others. My World Was Peopled With Mysteries, Seductive Hints, Vague Menaces, "intimations Of Immortality.

We Are, If Territory And Population Be Looked At Together, One Of The Great Countries Of The World - A Monster Country, One Might Say, Along With Others Such As China, India, The Recent Soviet Union, And Brazil. And There Is A Real Question As To Whether "bigness" In A Body Politic Is Not An Evil In Itself, Quite Aside From The Policies Pursued In Its Name.

The Best Thing We Can Do If We Want The Russians To Let Us Be Americans Is To Let The Russians Be Russian.