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Margaret Halsey

Margaret Halsey Quotes

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Famous Margaret Halsey Quotes

“As one might expect in a society with mass communications and mass markets, the pseudo-ethic says that whatever is popular, is right. Where the traditional ethic derives its sanction from the superiority of a few, the pseudo-ethic derives its sanction from the inferiority of a great many. The pseudo-ethic is keyed, not to the spiritually gifted, but to the spiritually ungifted.”

MightCultureCommunicationMassEthicsTraditionalGreat MenGiftedSuperioritySanctionsInferiorityPopular CulturePseudoMass Communication
Book:The Corrupted Giant: A Speculation on American Politics and Morals
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“A society struggles to fulfill its best instincts, even as an individual does, and generally makes just as hard going of it. The fight against prejudice is an inevitable process. Man has been warring against his own lower nature ever since he found out he had one, and the battle against intolerance is part of the same old struggle between good and evil that has preoccupied us ever since we gave up swinging from trees.”

MenDoeHas BeensHardFightingEvilFoundIndividualProcessStruggleTreeBattlePrejudiceInstinctInevitableGood And EvilIntoleranceGave UpStruggle Between Good And Evil
Book:Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro
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“The modification of prejudice takes a long time, and occurs as the result of a thousand things that happen to the prejudiced person - things he sees and hears and reads, people he talks to, and places he visits. Any given reformer must be content to take a small and obscure place in a chain of cumulative pressures.”

PeoplePersonsLongHappensGivenResultsThousandLong TimePrejudicePressureChainsObscureReformersModificationCumulative
Book:Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro
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“in race relations, the single gesture and the single individual are more often than not doomed to failure. Only the group and the long-term, undeviating policy make much headway. ... if you want to make the world a better place, the first thing you must accept is the fact that you cannot transcend your limitations as an individual.”

IfsWorldWantFirstsLongFactsIndividualTermRaceAcceptingGroupsPolicyRacismRelationLimitationLong TermGesturesDoomedBetter PlaceRace Relations
Book:Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro
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“There are ... other business societies - England, Holland, Belgium and France, for instance. But ours [the United States] is the only culture now extant in which business so completely dominates the national scene that sports, crime, sex, death, philanthropy and Easter Sunday are money-making propositions.”

StatesCultureSexSportsUnitedUnited StatesCrimeSceneEnglandInstanceFranceMaking MoneySundayPhilanthropyEasterPropositionsBelgiumHollandEaster Sunday
Book:The Folks at Home
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“Our Republic is not a pastoral, not a military, not an agricultural, not a nomadic, not a clerical, but a business civilization. Nor is there anything random, casual or accidental about the United States as a business society. It is thoroughly well integrated - organized from top to bottom for the maximum efficiency of commerce and industry, for the maximum efficiency of making money.”

WellsStatesUnitedUnited StatesMilitaryIndustryCivilizationBottomMaking MoneyOrganizedRepublicCommerceEfficiencyMaximumCasualIntegratedNomadic
Book:The Folks at Home
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“The feelings, myths and prejudices about the Negro American which now seem so valid and real to some of our white contemporaries will take their place on the shelf along with the belief in witches and the notion that the earth is the center of the solar system.  Nobody knows as yet whether the future [of the race situation] is hopeless. All we know is that it can be made hopeless, if enough people choose to consider it so.”

PeopleIfsKnowsMadeRealEnoughFeelingsSeemsEarthBeliefWhiteRaceSituationPrejudiceNotionMythHopelessWitchShelvesNobody KnowsSolar System
Author:Margaret Halsey
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“... organized religion, in a dominating business society, can do only one of two things. It can either assure the communicant with uneasy bluster that God Himself likes money -- a theory which convinces nobody -- or it can give him an apologetic, halfhearted invitation to go out and get himself crucified.”

GivingTwoCan DoTheoryLikesOrganizedTwo ThingsConvinceInvitationsUneasyOrganized ReligionDominatingApologeticBluster
Book:The Folks at Home
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“Not being one to calculate or look ahead, I had not stopped to think, when boys started paying attention to me, that the cup might be dashed from my lips, though experience should have taught me that dashing cups from lips was the way Victorian parents got most of their exercise.”

ThinkingWayShouldLooksMightParentAttentionBoysTaughtExerciseShould HaveLipsCupsPay AttentionVictorianDashing
Book:No Laughing Matter: The Autobiography of a Wasp
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“If the factory people outside the colleges live under the discipline of narrow means, the people inside live under almost every other kind of discipline except that of narrow means -- from the fruity austerities of learning, through the iron rations of English gentlemanhood, down to the modest disadvantages of occupying cold stone buildings without central heating and having to cross two or three quadrangles to take a bath.”

PeopleIfsKindMeanTwoThreeEducationBuildingCollegeColdDisciplineStonesCrossesIronFactoriesModestBathsDisadvantagesAusterityHeatingRations
Author:Margaret Halsey
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