Lewis H. Lapham Quotes About Children

Quotes about: Children

• 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

  Children, Blessed, Race

  Lewis H. Lapham (1995). “Hotel America: Scenes in the Lobby of the Fin-de-siècle”, p.18, Verso

• Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. The mounting of this illusion defines the purpose and accounts for the immense wealth of American sports. It is the ceremony of innocence that the fans pay to see - not the game or the match or the bout, but the ritual portrayal of a world in which time stops and all hope remains plausible, in which everybody present can recover the blameless expectations of a child, where the forces of light always triumph over the powers of darkness.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Sports, Business, Children

• 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

  Love, Dog, Children

  Lewis H. Lapham (1989). “Money and Class in America: Notes and Observations on the Civil Religion”

• 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

  Children, Pain, War

• The rich, like well brought up children, are meant to be seen, not heard.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Children, Rich, Heard

  "Money And Class In America: Notes And Observations On Our Civil Religion" by Lewis H. Lapham, (Chapter 6, The Precarious Eden, p. 151), 1989.

• As a child growing up in the precincts of wealth, and later as a college student, newspaper reporter and resident of New York's Upper East Side, I got used to listening to the talk of financial killings and sexual misalliance that animates the conversation of the rich and the familiars of the rich.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  New York, Growing Up, Children

  Lewis H. Lapham (1989). “Money and Class in America: Notes and Observations on the Civil Religion”

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