The point of life is to find the delicate equilibrium between dream and reality.

To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surmise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more surely.

The question in crisis or ordeal is not: Are you going to be an extremist? The question is: What kind of extremist are you going to be?

Belief in Some One's right to punish you is the fate of all children in Judaic-Christian culture. But nowhere else, perhaps, have the rich seed-beds of Western homes found such a growing climate for guilt as is produced in the South by the combination of a warm moist evangelism and racial segregation.

To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: It is the only way we can leave the future open.

The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.