Lewis H. Lapham Quotes

The state of perpetual emptiness is, of course, very good for business.

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.

Seeking the invisible through the imagery of the visible, the Americans never can get quite all the way to the end of the American dream.

The world goes on as before, and it turns out that nobody else seems to to notice the unbearable lightness of being.

It isn't money itself that causes the trouble, but the use of money as votive offering and pagan ornament.

We are a people captivated by the power and romance of metaphor, forever seeking the invisible through the image of the visible.

By the word "liberty" they meant liberty for property, not liberty for persons.

Wars might come and go, but the seven o'clock news lives forever.

Chapter 10, Envoi, p. 237

In the garden of tabloid delight, there is always a clean towel and another song.

Chapter 10, Envoi, p. 242

Well aware of both the continuity and contingency of human affairs, Adams and Madison searched the works of Tacitus and Voltaire and Locke like carpenters rummaging through their assortment of tools, knowing that all the pediments were jury-rigged, all the provisional, all the alliances temporary.

At this late stage in the history of American capitalism I'm not sure I know how much testimony still needs to be presented to establish the relation between profit and theft.

Let the corporations do as they please - pillage the environment, falsify their advertising, rig the securities markets - and it is none of the federal government's business to interfere with the will of heaven.

The rich, like well brought up children, are meant to be seen, not heard.