The survival of American democracy depends less on the size of its armies than on the capacity of its individual citizens to rely... on the strength of their own thought. Lewis H. Lapham More Quotes by Lewis H. Lapham More Quotes From Lewis H. Lapham Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character. Lewis H. Lapham technique leadership character A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it. Lewis H. Lapham business football people America is about class. To pretend that it isn't is very ignorant. No society has ever existed without some kind of a ruling class. Lewis H. Lapham ignorant kind Anti-utopianism continues to suffuse our culture...Today few imagine that society can be fundamentally improved, and those who do are seen as at best deluded, at worst threatening. Lewis H. Lapham society today culture It isn't money itself that causes the trouble, but the use of money as votive offering and pagan ornament. Lewis H. Lapham ornaments offering use The gentlemen who wrote the Constitution were as suspicious of efficient government as they were wary of democracy, a "turbulence and a folly" that was associated with the unruly ignorance of an urban mob. Lewis H. Lapham gentleman government ignorance People may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true. Lewis H. Lapham too-much may people Rumors and reports of man's relation with animals are the world's oldest news stories, headlined in the stars of the zodiac, posted on the walls of prehistoric caves, inscribed in the languages of Egyptian myth, Greek philosophy, Hindu religion, Christian art, our own DNA. Belonging within the circle of mankind's intimate acquaintance ... constant albeit speechless companions, they supplied energies fit to be harnessed or roasted. Lewis H. Lapham stars christian art Talk about the flag or drugs or crime (never about race or class or justice) and follow the yellow brick road to the wonderful land of consensus. In place of honest argument among consenting adults the politicians substitute a lullaby for frightened children: the pretense that conflict doesn't really exist, that we have achieved the blessed state in which we no longer need politics. Lewis H. Lapham race blessed children Unlike every other nation in the world, the United States defines itself as a hypothesis and constitutes itself as an argument. Lewis H. Lapham argument united-states world The future is an empty canvas or a blank sheet of paper, and if you have the courage of your own thought and your own observation you can make of it what you will Lewis H. Lapham canvas empty paper We might make a public moan in the newspapers about the decay of conscience, but in private conversation, no matter what crimes a man may have committed or how cynically he may have debased his talent or his friends, variations on the answer Yes, but I did it for the money, satisfy all but the most tiresome objections. Lewis H. Lapham decay money men 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 empty canvas or a blank sheet of paper, and if you have the courage of your own thought and your own observation, you can make of it what you will. Lewis H. Lapham waiting inspirational life I never can pass by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without thinking of it not as a gallery of living portraits but as a cemetery of tax-deductible wealth. Lewis H. Lapham new-york art thinking Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors. Lewis H. Lapham democracy doors quiet Recollections of early childhood bear comparison to fairy tales, and ... youth remains an unknown country to whose bourn no traveler returns except as the agent of a foreign power. Lewis H. Lapham agents childhood country What kind of people do we wish to become, and how do we know an American when we see one? Is it possible to pursue a common purpose without a common history or a standard text? Lewis H. Lapham common-purpose wish people The mystical nature of American consumption accounts for its joylessness. We spend a great deal of time in stores, but if we don't seem to take much pleasure in our buying, it's because we're engaged in the acts of sacrifice and self-definition. Abashed in the presence of expensive merchandise, we recognize ourselves . . . as suppliants admitted to a shrine. Lewis H. Lapham shrines sacrifice self Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what's good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country. Lewis H. Lapham nbc men country Usually when I drank too much, I could guess why I did so, the objective being to murder a state of consciousness that I didn't have the courage to sustain--a fear of heights, which sometimes during the carnival of the 1960s accompanied my attempts to transform the bourgeois journalist into an avant-garde novelist. The stepped-up ambition was a commonplace among the would-be William Faulkners of my generation; nearly always it resulted in commercial failure and literary embarrassment. Lewis H. Lapham height too-much ambition
