Lewis H. Lapham - Money Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

View all Lewis H. Lapham Quotes
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
It isn't money itself that causes the trouble, but the use of money as votive offering and pagan ornament.

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 isn't enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong. The spectacle is nearly always comic.

Lewis H. Lapham
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
How else does a society know or govern itself if not with guidelines shaped by some form of class distinction? In the United States the table of organization is for sale, made with money instead of an aristocratic birthright, the favor of a king, or the grace of God.

Lewis H. Lapham
If we could let go of our faith in money, who knows what we might put in its place?

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 tool or they can dance around it as if it were the incarnation of a god.

Lewis H. Lapham
Under the rules of a society that cannot distinguish between profit and profiteering, between money defined as necessity and money defined as luxury, murder is occasionally obligatory and always permissible.

Lewis H. Lapham