"If you recoil from solitude, . . . you are politically disabled"

University Archives & Special Collections, University of Massachusetts Boston

"in a society stressing as strongly as America does the importance of social participation, everything of supreme importance depends on there being the counterweight of communal solitude. If you have never, all alone, tried to define your major convictions, you cannot enter into truth-seeking conversation and thus are incapable of deep human relations. If you cannot be apart from others, you cannot engage in prayer and meditation and thus cannot enter into genuine relations with God. If you recoil from solitude, it may even be said, you are politically disabled; you necessarily lack the spirit of independence needed to stand for what is right in the public realm."

     Glenn Tinder, "Alone for others," First things 62 (April 1996):  10 (8-10).