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I have been told often enough that I have a sense of humor that makes strong men faint and women reach for weapons;
In my opinion our own country and every other advanced country in the world is heavily dependent upon a certain type of man. This man may be an executive, a scientist, a general or a coal miner—but he is the man who works harder than there is any immediate need for him to work and harder than any of the incentives offered him by society justify. He does this because work offers him an outlet for the tensions a hostile environment has built up in him and society exploits him to its benefit.”
He did not know what he looked like, but the man in the mirror was not he. The image was older, fatter, meaner, more cunning, and stupider than he knew himself to be,
What I meant was that if I knew what you ought to be doing I’d hire a clerk to do it. You’re where you are because we feel—rightly or wrongly—that you can find your own work, recognize it when you see it, and do it or get somebody else to. Just make damn sure you don’t step on anybody’s toes while you’re doing it, and don’t make more trouble than you fix. Don’t rock the boat.”
“I see,” Forlesen said. “Just make damn sure before you do anything that it’s in line with policy, and remember that if you get the unions down on us we’re going to throw you overboard quick.”
GENICON An imagined sexual partner.
They don’t care what we think of them, which is why we think the world of them.
“We all wake up on a battlefield,” said G. K. Chesterton, talking of life, “but it often takes us a long time to realize what the fight is about or even who is fighting whom.”
“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”
This, then, is the new illiteracy, the illiteracy of those who can read but don’t.
