from: A Life in Letters, p.203 from a Sept. 1961 letter to Ethel Kennedy
"As a nation we have begun to float off into a moral void and all the sermons of all the priests in the country (if they preach at all) are not going to help much...It seems to me that there are dangerous ambiguities about our democracy in its actual present condition. I wonder to what extent our ideals are now a front for organized selfishness and systematic irresponsibility...We cannot go on living every man for himself. The most actual danger of all is that we may someday float without realizing it into a nice tight fascist society in which all the resentments and all the guilt in all the messed up teenagers (and older ones) will be channeled into a destructive groove..."
"Certainly our basic needs is for truth, and not for "images" and slogans that "engineer consent." We are living in a dream world. We do not know ourselves or our adversaries."
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