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.
More Quotes from Lewis 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 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 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. Money votes socialist or monarchist, finds a profit in pornography or translations from the Bible, commissions Rembrandt and underwrites the technology of Auschwitz. It acquires its meaning from the uses to which it is put.
Lewis Lapham
Except in a few well-publicized instances (enough to lend credence to the iconography painted on the walls of the media), the rigorous practice of rugged individualism usually leads to poverty, ostracism and disgrace. The rugged individualist is too often mistaken for the misfit, the maverick, the spoilsport, the sore thumb.
Lewis Lapham
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 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 Lapham
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Based on Topics: Affection Quotes, Attention Quotes, Children Quotes, Dogs Quotes, Emotions Quotes, Love Quotes, Money & Wealth Quotes, Space QuotesBased on Keywords: brunt, enamel, irritation, narcissism
It's a technical, fairly difficult job that has no particular political connotations, so I doubt there are any big campaign contributors dying to be on the Fed. And remember, it doesn't pay very well, certainly by Republican standards.
Alice Rivlin
Every time an Oscar is given out, an agent gets his wings.
Kathy Bates
I'm real bent on dialogue. I'm just a little bit crazy and when you put that along with 20 years as a criminal lawyer, it's pretty easy to come up with some interesting plots.
Christopher Darden