Seeing Is Believing, And If An American

We Need Not Seek Our Own Best Selves, And In The Meantime We Inoculate Ourselves Against The Viruses Of Age And Idealism, Which, As The Advertising Agencies Well Know, Depress Sales And Sour The Feasts Of Consumption.

The Genius Of Capitalism Consists Precisely In Its Lack Of Morality. Unless He Is Rich Enough To Hire His Own Choir, A Capitalist Is A Fellow Who, By Definition, Can Ill Afford To Believe In Anything Other Than The Doctrine Of The Bottom Line. Deprive A Capitalist Of His God-given Right To Lie And Cheat And Steal, And The Poor Sap Stands A Better Than Even Chance Of Becoming One Of The Abominable Wards Of The State From Whose Grimy Fingers The Reagan Administration Hopes To Snatch The Ark Of Democracy.

When We Talk About The Foreign, The Question Becomes One Of Us Versus Them. But In The End, Is One Just The Opposite Side Of The Other?

Of What Does Politics Consist Except The Making Of Imperfect Decisions, Many Of Them Unjust And Quite A Few Of Them Deadly?

From Authors Whom I Read More Than Once I Learn To Value The Weight Of Words And To Delight In Their Meter And Cadence -- In Gibbon's Polyphonic Counterpoint And Guedalla's Command Of The Subjunctive, In Mailer's Hyperbole And Dillard's Similes, In Twain's Invectives And Burlesques With Which He Set The Torch Of His Ferocious Wit To The Hospitality Tents Of The World's Colossal Humbug . . . I Know No Other Way Out Of What Is Both The Maze Of The Eternal Present And The Prison Of The Self Except With A String Of Words.