What I Can't Understand Is, How Can

The First Twenty Years Of My Life Were Wasted. I Didn't Fit My Environment, And I Didn't Know Any Other.

That Way Of Life Against Which My Generation Rebelled Had Given Us Grim Courage, Fortitude, Self-discipline, A Sense Of Individual Responsibility, And A Capacity For Relentless Hard Work.

There Is A City Myth That Country Life Was Isolated And Lonely; The Truth Is That Farmers And Their Families Then Had A Richer Social Life Than They Have Now. They Enjoyed A Society Organic, Satisfying And Whole, Not Mixed And Thinned With The Life Of Town, City And Nation As It Now Is.

I So Much Like Real Things - The Realities That Come Naturally From The Depths Of Us Like - What Shall I Say? - The Way Trees Grow, From Some Inner Essential Principle Of Them, Just Expressing Itself.

One Thing I Hate About The New Deal Is That It Is Killing What, To Me, Is The American Pioneering Spirit. I Simply Do Not Know What To Tell My Own Boys, Leaving School And Confronting This New World Whose Ideal Is Security And Whose Practice Is Dependence Upon Government Instead Of Upon One's Self. All The Old Character-values Seem Simply Insane From A Practical Point Of View; The Self-reliant, The Independent, The Courageous Man Is Penalized From Every Direction.