People and Democracy.....

The world is full of people -appallingly full; it has never been so full of people before and they are all tumbling over each other. Most of the people, one does not know and some of them does not like, does not like the color of their skins, say, or the shapes of their noses or the way they blow them or don’t blow them, or the way they talk, or their smell, or their clothes and so on. Well, what is one to do? There are two solutions. One of them Nazi solution. If you don’t like people, kill them, vanish them, segregate them, and then strut up and down proclaiming that you are the salt of earth. The other way is much less thrilling, but it is, on the whole, the way of democracies, and I prefer it. If you don’t like people, put up with them as well as you can. Don’t try to love them, you can’t, you will only strain yourself. But try to tolerate them. On the basis of that tolerance a civilized future may be built. Certainly I can see no other foundation for the post-war world.