
“The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.”
Gen. Edward Cummings, in Pt. 1, Ch. 6
Source: The Naked and the Dead (1948)
Superman Comes to the Supermarket (1960)
“The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.”
Gen. Edward Cummings, in Pt. 1, Ch. 6
Source: The Naked and the Dead (1948)
Preface to A Gallery of Literary Portraits, William Tait, Edinburgh 1845
Other Quotes
Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: They call you "Little Man", "Common Man"; they say a new era has begun, the "Era of the Common Man". It isn't you who says so, Little Man. It is they, the Vice Presidents of great nations, promoted labour leaders, repentant sons of bourgeois families, statesman and philosophers. They give you your future but don't ask about your past.
The Right to Be Lazy (1883), H. Kerr, trans. (1907), pp. 11-12
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), History
Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 29
Source: Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters] (1937), p. 20
II. Actio Læsa; The strength, and the functions of the senses, and other faculties change and fail.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)
1960s, How Long, Not Long (1965)
Context: If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. He gave him Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. And he ate Jim Crow. And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, their last outpost of psychological oblivion. Thus, the threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike resulted in the establishment of a segregated society. They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores from the rich whites; they segregated southern churches from Christianity; they segregated southern minds from honest thinking; and they segregated the Negro from everything. That’s what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society: a society of justice where none would pray upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the dignity and worth of human personality.