Mr. Lapham Quotes & Sayings

The practice of our democracy depends on a sense of, and knowledge of, history in the same way that playing in the World Series requires a bat and a ball. — Lewis H. Lapham

At this late stage in the history of American capitalism I'm not sure I know how much testimony still needs to be presented to establish the relation between profit and theft. — Lewis H. Lapham

Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in order for presidents to make wars, for governments to feed on the substance of their people, for insurance companies to cheat the young and rob the old. — 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 reach of a television camera or subpoena. — Lewis H. Lapham

More than illness or death, the American journalist fears standing alone against the whim of his owners or the prejudices of his audience. Deprive William Safire of the insignia of the New York Times, and he would have a hard time selling his truths to a weekly broadsheet in suburban Duluth. — Lewis H. Lapham

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

Among all the emotions, the rich have the least talent for love. It is possible to love one's dog, dress or duck-shooting hat, but a human being presents a more difficult problem. The rich might wish to experience feelings of affection, but it is almost impossible to chip away the enamel of their narcissism. They take up all the space in all the mirrors in the house. Their children, who represent the most present and therefore the most annoying claim on their attention, usually receive the brunt of their irritation. — Lewis H. Lapham

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

Seeing is believing, and if an American success is to count for anything in the world it must be clothed in the raiment of property. As often as not it isn't the money itself that means anything; it is the use of money as the currency of the soul. — 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 it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint. — 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 possible to pursue a common purpose without a common history or a standard text? — Lewis H. Lapham

Youth as glimpsed by its elders is a story that comes from afar, showing itself as either lovely to look at or a torment to endure. — 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, which gradually destroyed itself by substituting the faith in a legion of miraculous words for the strength of armies and the weight of walls. — Lewis H. Lapham

We need not seek our own best selves, and in the meantime we inoculate ourselves against the viruses of age and idealism, which, as the advertising agencies well know, depress sales and sour the feasts of consumption. — Lewis H. Lapham

The leading cause of death is birth. — Lewis H. Lapham

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 and its intended audience. — Lewis H. Lapham

The supply of government exceeds demand. — Lewis H. Lapham

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

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

I begin to understand that failure is its own reward. It is in the effort to close the distance between the work imagined and the work achieved wherein it is to be found that the ceaseless labor is the freedom of play, that what's at stake isn't a reflection in the mirror of fame but the escape from the prison of the self. — Lewis H. Lapham

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

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

Now that Mr. Carter has made a book of his diary, an adoring memoir entitled Keeping Faith, the notes read like a collection of letters sent from scout camp. — Lewis H. Lapham

Let the corporations do as they please
pillage the environment, falsify their advertising, rig the securities markets
and it is none of the federal government's business to interfere with the will of heaven. — Lewis H. Lapham

The figure of the enthusiast who has just discovered jogging or a new way to fix tofu can be said to stand or, more accurately, to tremble on the threshold of conversion, as the representative American — Lewis H. Lapham

The substitution of meaning accounts for the grasping of misers as well as the extravagance of spendthrifts. Karl Marx well understood this peculiar transformation of flesh into coin. — Lewis H. Lapham

The world goes on as before, and it turns out that nobody else seems to to notice the unbearable lightness of being. — Lewis H. Lapham

It is no accident that banks resemble temples, preferably Greek, and that the supplicants who come to perform the rites of deposit and withdrawal instinctively lower their voices into the registers of awe. Even the most junior tellers acquire within weeks of their employment the officiousness of hierophants tending an eternal flame. — Lewis H. Lapham

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

The American oligarchy increasingly has less in common with the American people than it does with the equivalent oligarchies in Germany or Mexico or Japan. — Lewis H. Lapham

History is not what happened 200 or 2,000 years ago; it's a story about what happened 200 or 2,000 years ago. — Lewis H. Lapham

Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. — Lewis H. Lapham