Yquotes.com

 

To me, the irony of this involvement with size, as I observed earlier, is the unwillingness or inability of so many Americans to identify themselves with something as vast as the United States. Bigger cars, bigger parking lots, bigger corporate structures, bigger farms, bigger drug stores, bigger supermarkets, bigger motion-picture screens. The tangible and the functional expand, while the intangible and the beautiful shrink. Left to wither is the national purpose, national educational needs, literature and theater, and our critical faculties. The national dialogue is gradually being lost in a froth of misleading self-congratulation and cliche. National needs and interests are slowly being submerged by the national preoccupation with the irrelevant.
--
"In Need of a Consensus," Penrose Memorial Lecture to the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia (April 20, 1961), in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, August 1961, p. 352.

 

J. William Fulbright

» J. William Fulbright - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

There is this lie floating around that says I am supposed to be able to do life alone, without any help, without stopping to worship something bigger than myself. But I actually believe there is something bigger than me, and I need for there to be something bigger than me. I need someone to put awe inside me; I need to come second to someone who has everything figured out.

 

Don Miller

 

We weren't managed from the word go, like U2 or Simple Minds, to get bigger and bigger and take over the planet.

 

Ian McCulloch

 

Burning autumn leaves,
I yearn to make the bonfire
Bigger and bigger.

 

Richard Wright

 

Religion is not black and white. It's much more complicated. Spirituality is much bigger than that. God is much bigger than that. I don't believe in a wrathful God. I believe he's much more forgiving and inclusive than some religions. The things that are done in her name or his name are horrible.

 

Susan Sarandon

 

Dance is bigger than the physical body. When you extend your arm, it doesn't stop at the end of your fingers, because you're dancing bigger than that; you're dancing spirit.

 

Judith Jamison