Lewis H. Lapham

I begin to understand that failure is its own reward. It is in the effort to close the distance between the work…

— Lewis H. Lapham

Except in a few well-publicized instances (enough to lend credence to the iconography painted on the walls of the media), the rigorous…

— Lewis H. Lapham

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

What kind of people do we wish to become, and how do we know an American when we see one? Is it…

— Lewis H. Lapham

Let the corporations do as they please -- pillage the environment, falsify their advertising, rig the securities markets -- and it is…

— Lewis H. Lapham

America is about class. To pretend that it isn't is very ignorant. No society has ever existed without some kind of a…

— Lewis H. Lapham

A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it…

— Lewis H. Lapham

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

Seeing is believing, and if an American success is to count for anything in the world it must be clothed in the…

— Lewis H. Lapham

Tardiness is next to wickedness in a society relentless in its consumption of time as both a good and a service--as tweet…

— Lewis H. Lapham

It is the fear of death - 24/7 in every shade of hospital white and doomsday black--that sells the pharmaceutical, political, financial,…

— Lewis H. Lapham

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

— Lewis H. Lapham

Power broken into a thousand pieces can be hidden and disowned. If no individual or institution possesses the authority to act without…

— Lewis H. Lapham

Recollections of early childhood bear comparison to fairy tales, and ... youth remains an unknown country to whose bourn no traveler returns…

— Lewis H. Lapham

Democracy is born in dirt, nourished by the digging up and turning over as much of it as can be brought within…

— Lewis H. Lapham

The practice of our democracy depends on a sense of, and knowledge of, history in the same way that playing in the…

— Lewis H. Lapham

But the line of thought that I'd been chasing for several days was implicit in the ruins of the old Roman Empire,…

— Lewis H. Lapham

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

— Lewis H. Lapham

The national distrust of the contemplative temperament arises less from an innate Philistinism than from a suspicion of anything that cannot be…

— Lewis H. Lapham

If in the well and truly made martini DeVoto finds "water of life" and the blessing to the spirit, so also DeVoto's…

— Lewis H. Lapham

Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and…

— Lewis H. Lapham

The American oligarchy increasingly has less in common with the American people than it does with the equivalent oligarchies in Germany or…

— Lewis H. Lapham

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

Money is like fire, an element as little troubled by moralizing as earth, air and water. Men can employ it as a…

— Lewis H. Lapham

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