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.
More Quotes from Lewis Lapham:
What the Bush administration is primarily interested in is regime change in the United States, not regime change in Iraq or South East Asia or the Balkans. A foreign war is a wonderful lollipop to stuff in the mouth of a possibly quarrelsome press.Lewis 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 Lapham
The genius of capitalism consists precisely in its lack of morality. Unless he is rich enough to hire his own choir, a capitalist is a fellow who, by definition, can ill afford to believe in anything other than the doctrine of the bottom line. Deprive a capitalist of his God-given right to lie and cheat and steal, and the poor sap stands a better than even chance of becoming one of the abominable wards of the state from whose grimy fingers the Reagan Administration hopes to snatch the ark of democracy.
Lewis 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 Lapham
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 Lapham
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 Lapham
Readers Who Like This Quotation Also Like:
Based on Topics: America Quotes, Belief & Faith Quotes, Money & Wealth Quotes, Property Quotes, Soul Quotes, Success Quotes, World QuotesBased on Keywords: raiment
Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
W. H. Auden
I've been doing it all along, ever since I got out of art school.
Martin Mull
Watch every detail that affects the accuracy of your work.
Arthur C. Nielsen