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… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
The figure of the enthusiast who has just discovered jogging or a new way to fix tofu can be said to stand or, more… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
The future turns out to be something that you make instead of find. It isn't waiting for your arrival, either with an arrest warrant or a band, nor is it any further away than the next sentence, the next best guess, the next sketch for the painting of a life portrait that might become a masterpiece. The future is an… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share
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… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share
We might make a public moan in the newspapers about the decay of conscience, but in private conversation, no matter what crimes a man… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
[For American consumer society], the country's reserves of ignorance constitute a natural resource as precious as the Mississippi River or the long-lost herds of… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
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… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
His administration apparently means to define itself as a television program instead of a government...I don't know if it can please both its sponsors… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
In the garden of tabloid delight, there is always a clean towel and another song. — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
About the presence of death and dying I don't remember the society in the 1950s being so skittish as it has since become. People… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
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