The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we need to be less greedy and less wasteful.
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History simply affords too little evidence that anyone's individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.
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There is a world of difference between the person who, believing that there is no use [in protest], says so to himself or to no one, and the person who says it aloud to someone else.
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It was no thought or word that called culture into being, but a tool or weapon. After the stone axe we needed song and story to remember innocence, to record effect--and so to describe the limits, to say what can be done without damage.
The use only of our bodies for work or love or pleasure, or even for combat, sets us
free again in the wilderness, and we exult.
But a man with a machine and inadequate culture...is a pestilence. He shakes more than he can hold.
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