Lewis H. Lapham - States Quotes

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To the United States, the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.

Lewis H. Lapham
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
The state of perpetual emptiness is, of course, very good for business.

Lewis H. Lapham
Given lesser opportunities, Kissinger would have done very well as a talk show host. Fortunately for him, although not so fortunately for the United States, he found his patron in Nelson Rockefeller instead of William Paley.

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

Lewis H. Lapham
Unlike every other other nation in the world, the United States defines itself as a hypothesis and constitutes itself as an argument.

Lewis H. Lapham