Most American cities shop to their best advantage when seen from a height or from a distance, at a point where the ugliness of the buildings dissolve… - Lewis H. Lapham

Money ennobles rich people, and corrupts poor people. Money in sufficient quantity entitles its possessor to the reverence and respect owed to the statue of George Washington. Money is the sacred elephant, always in the room, never to be addressed or seen, but whose will is done on earth as it is in Heaven.

Once having proclaimed our loyalty to the abstract idea that all men are created equal, we do everything in our power to prove ourselves unequal. Among the world's peoples, none other belongs to so many clubs, associations, committees and secret societies.

The substitution of meaning accounts for the grasping of misers as well as the extravagance of spendthrifts. Karl Marx well understood this peculiar transformation of flesh into coin.