When people start hurling insults at you, you know their minds are closed and there's no point in debating. You disengage yourself as quickly as possible from the situation.

people, in forming their opinions of others, are usually lazy enough to go by whatever is most obvious or whatever chance remark they happen to hear. So the best policy is to dictate to others the opinion you want them to have of you.

When a society abandons its ideals just because most people can't live up to them, behavior gets very ugly indeed.

When politeness is used to show up other people, it is reclassified as rudeness. Thus it is technically impossible to be too polite.

People read informality as, 'Do whatever you feel like,' and whatever you feel like might be disastrous.

it's no longer socially acceptable to make bigoted statements and racist remarks. Some people are having an awful time with that: 'I didn't know anybody would be offended!' Well, where have you been? I remember when people got away with it and they don't anymore. That's fabulous.

Washington knows that it is not safe to kick people who are down until you find out what their next stop will be.