“ What the Bush administration is primarily interested in is regime change in the United States, not regime change in Iraq or South East Asia or the Balkans. A foreign war is a wonderful lollipop to stuff in the mouth of a possibly quarrelsome press. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 1K
“ Seeing is believing, and if an American success is to count for anything in the world it must be clothed in the raiment of property. As often as not it isn't the money itself that means anything; it is the use of money as the currency of the soul. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 2.2K
“ It is no accident that banks resemble temples, preferably Greek, and that the supplicants who come to perform the rites of deposit and withdrawal instinctively lower their voices into the registers of awe. Even the most junior tellers acquire within weeks of their employment the officiousness of hierophants tending an eternal flame… ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 413
“ We might make a public moan in the newspapers about the decay of conscience, but in private conversation, no matter what crimes a man may have committed or how cynically he may have debased his talent or his friends, variations on the answer "Yes, but I did it for the money," satisfy all but the most tiresome objections. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 289
“ Recollections of early childhood bear comparison to fairy tales, and... youth remains an unknown country to whose bourn no traveler returns except as the agent of a foreign power. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 2.2K
“ It is no accident that banks resemble temples, preferably Greek, and that the supplicants who come to perform the rites of deposit and withdrawal instinctively lower their voices into the registers of awe. Even the most junior tellers acquire within weeks of their employment the officiousness of hierophants tending an eternal flame… ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 1.3K
“ Talk about the flag or drugs or crime and follow the yellow brick road to the wonderful land of "consensus." In place of honest argument among consenting adults the politicians substitute a lullaby for frightened children: the pretense that conflict doesn't really exist, that we have achieved the blessed state in which we no longer need politics. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 1.7K
“ Seeing is believing, and if an American success is to count for anything in the world it must be clothed in the raiment of property. As often as not it isn't the money itself that means anything; it is the use of money as the currency of the soul. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 1.2K
“ A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 55
“ What the Bush administration is primarily interested in is regime change in the United States, not regime change in Iraq or South East Asia or the Balkans. A foreign war is a wonderful lollipop to stuff in the mouth of a possibly quarrelsome press. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 1K
“ Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. The mounting of this illusion defines the purpose and accounts for the immense wealth of American sports. It is the ceremony of innocence that the fans pay to see — not the game or the match or the bout, but the ritual portrayal of a world in which time stops and all hope remains plausible, in which everybody present can recover the blameless expectations of a child, where the forces of light always triumph over the powers of darkness. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 800
“ We might make a public moan in the newspapers about the decay of conscience, but in private conversation, no matter what crimes a man may have committed or how cynically he may have debased his talent or his friends, variations on the answer "Yes, but I did it for the money," satisfy all but the most tiresome objections. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 1.8K
“ We might make a public moan in the newspapers about the decay of conscience, but in private conversation, no matter what crimes a man may have committed or how cynically he may have debased his talent or his friends, variations on the answer "Yes, but I did it for the money," satisfy all but the most tiresome objections. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 2.6K
“ The genius of capitalism consists precisely in its lack of morality. Unless he is rich enough to hire his own choir, a capitalist is a fellow who, by definition, can ill afford to believe in anything other than the doctrine of the bottom line. Deprive a capitalist of his God-given right to lie and cheat and steal, and the poor sap stands a better than even chance of becoming one of the abominable wards of the state from whose grimy fingers the Reagan Administration hopes to snatch the ark of democracy. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 1.9K
“ Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what's good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence… ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 1.8K
“ Money is like fire, an element as little troubled by moralizing as earth, air and water. Men can employ it as a tool or they can dance around it as if it were the incarnation of a god. Money votes socialist or monarchist, finds a profit in pornography or translations from the Bible, commissions Rembrandt and underwrites the technology of Auschwitz… ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 2.2K
“ We might make a public moan in the newspapers about the decay of conscience, but in private conversation, no matter what crimes a man may have committed or how cynically he may have debased his talent or his friends, variations on the answer "Yes, but I did it for the money," satisfy all but the most tiresome objections. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 2.4K
“ It is no accident that banks resemble temples, preferably Greek, and that the supplicants who come to perform the rites of deposit and withdrawal instinctively lower their voices into the registers of awe. Even the most junior tellers acquire within weeks of their employment the officiousness of hierophants tending an eternal flame… ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 1.5K
“ Talk about the flag or drugs or crime and follow the yellow brick road to the wonderful land of "consensus." In place of honest argument among consenting adults the politicians substitute a lullaby for frightened children: the pretense that conflict doesn't really exist, that we have achieved the blessed state in which we no longer need politics. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 3.8K
“ A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 1.3K
“ In the garden of tabloid delight, there is always a clean towel and another song. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 2.5K
“ Among all the emotions, the rich have the least talent for love. It is possible to love one's dog, dress or duck-shooting hat, but a human being presents a more difficult problem. The rich might wish to experience feelings of affection, but it is almost impossible to chip away the enamel of their narcissism… ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 3.9K
“ A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn't enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong… ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 485
“ Among all the emotions, the rich have the least talent for love. It is possible to love one's dog, dress or duck-shooting hat, but a human being presents a more difficult problem. The rich might wish to experience feelings of affection, but it is almost impossible to chip away the enamel of their narcissism… ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 2.5K
“ I never can pass by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without thinking of it not as a gallery of living portraits but as a cemetery of tax-deductible wealth. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 1.8K
“ We might make a public moan in the newspapers about the decay of conscience, but in private conversation, no matter what crimes a man may have committed or how cynically he may have debased his talent or his friends, variations on the answer "Yes, but I did it for the money," satisfy all but the most tiresome objections. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 3.9K
“ Except in a few well-publicized instances the rigorous practice of rugged individualism usually leads to poverty, ostracism and disgrace. The rugged individualist is too often mistaken for the misfit, the maverick, the spoilsport, the sore thumb. ”
- Lewis H. Lapham- Copy
- 3.6K
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