Respectable People

Respectable people…What bastards! 

    - Emile Zola, The Belly of Paris (1873)

The Danger of Indignation

Indignation and goodwill are not enough to make the world better.  Clarity is needed, as well as charity, however difficult this may be to imagine, much less sustain, toward the other side.  Perhaps the worst thing that can be said about social indignation is that it so frequently leads to the death of personal humility.  Once that has happened, one has ceased to live in that world of men which one is striving so mightily to make over.  One has entered into a dialogue with that terrifying deity, sometimes called History, previously, and perhaps again, to be referred to as God, to which no sacrifice in human suffering is too great.

            - James Baldwin, “The Crusade of Indignation” (1956)

Cousinly Love

The Americans and the English are bound together at present by the ties of war, and by that sort of cousinly love which expresses itself in private by foaming at the mouth.

- Bernard Shaw, “Why Devolution Will Not

              Do”, The Irish Statesman, November 15,

              1919

        

The Problem with Opinions

The problem with opinions is that one is stuck with them.

      - Susan Sontag, “The Conscience of Words” (2001)