Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
Unlike every other nation in the world, the United States defines itself as a hypothesis and constitutes itself as an argument. — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
The state of perpetual emptiness is, of course, very good for business. — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
Given lesser opportunities, Kissinger would have done very well as a talk show host. Fortunately for him, although not so fortunately for… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. The mounting of this illusion defines… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
Further strengthenings of the self-centered instinct for survival recruit even greater numbers of people into some sort of ring of fellowship (church… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
Usually when I drank too much, I could guess why I did so, the objective being to murder a state of consciousness… — 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
The genius of capitalism consists precisely in its lack of morality. Unless he is rich enough to hire his own choir, a… — 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… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share Image
What joins the Americans one to another is not a common ancestry, language or race, but a shared work of the imagination… — 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
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
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
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
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
[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
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
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
In the garden of tabloid delight, there is always a clean towel and another song. — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share
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
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
Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in order for presidents to make wars, for governments to feed… — Lewis H. Lapham Copy Share
