His administration apparently means to define itself as a television program instead of a government...I don't know if it can please both… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in order for presidents to make wars, for governments… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
Talk about the flag or drugs or crime (never about race or class or justice) and follow the yellow brick road to… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
Of what does politics consist except the making of imperfect decisions, many of them unjust and quite a few of them deadly? — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
The gentlemen who wrote the Constitution were as suspicious of efficient government as they were wary of democracy, a "turbulence and a… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
Democracy is a difficult art of government, demanding of its citizens high ratios of courage and literacy, and at the moment we… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what's good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity.… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
Label celebrity a consumer society's most precious consumer product, and eventually it becomes the hero with a thousand faces, the packaging of… — 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… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
The genius of capitalism consists precisely in its lack of morality. Unless he is rich enough to hire his own choir, a capitalist is… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
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