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Lewis H. Lapham Biography

Lewis H. Lapham

Lewis Henry Lapham (/ˈluːɪs ˈlæpəm/; born January 8, 1935) is an American writer. He was the editor of the American monthly Harper's Magazine from 1976 until 1981, and from 1983 until 2006. He is the founder of Lapham's Quarterly, a quarterly publication about history and literature, and has written numerous books on politics and current affairs.

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Lewis H. Lapham Quotes

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.

Children, Feed, Governments, Pain, Suffers, War

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

Children, Heard, Like, Rich

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.

Distinguish, Luxury, Money, Murder, Profiteering, Under

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.

Brunt, Children, Dog, Love, Receive, Usually

The American oligarchy increasingly has less in common with the American people than it does with the equivalent oligarchies in Germany or Mexico or Japan.

Common, Doe, Germany, Japan, Mexico, People

The mystical nature of American consumption accounts for its joylessness. We spend a great deal of time in stores, but if we don't seem to take much pleasure in our buying, it's because we're engaged in the acts of sacrifice and self-definition. Abashed in the presence of expensive merchandise, we recognize ourselves. . . as suppliants admitted to a shrine.

Abashed, Accounts, Pleasure, Sacrifice, Self, Shrines

But the line of thought that I'd been chasing for several days was implicit in the ruins of the old Roman Empire, which gradually destroyed itself by substituting the faith in a legion of miraculous words for the strength of armies and the weight of walls.

Army, Faith, Implicit, Substituting, Wall, Weight

I begin to understand that failure is its own reward. It is in the effort to close the distance between the work imagined and the work achieved wherein it is to be found that the ceaseless labor is the freedom of play, that what’s at stake isn’t a reflection in the mirror of fame but the escape from the prison of the self.

Distance, Escape, Mirrors, Reflection, Understand, Work

It is no accident that banks resemble temples, preferably Greek, and that the supplicants who come to perform the rites of deposit and withdrawal instinctively lower their voices into the registers of awe. Even the most junior tellers acquire within weeks of their employment the officiousness of hierophants tending an eternal flame.

Acquire, Flame, Flames, Greek, Hierophants, Voice

Youth as glimpsed by its elders is a story that comes from afar, showing itself as either lovely to look at or a torment to endure.

Look, Looks, Lovely, Stories, Story, Youth

Let the rabbit of free enterprise out of its velveteen bag and too many people would have to be fired, too much idiocy exposed to the light of judgment or ridicule, too much vanity sacrificed to the fires of efficiency. Such a catastrophe obviously would threaten the American way of life, to say nothing of the belief in free markets.

American, Fire, Judgment, Light, Vanity

The pose of innocence is as mandatory as the ability to eat banquet food and endure the scourging of the press.

Banquets, Endure, Innocence, Mandatory, Scourging

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

Course, Emptiness, Good, Perpetual, States, Very Good

The gentlemen who wrote the Constitution were as suspicious of efficient government as they were wary of democracy, a "turbulence and a folly" that was associated with the unruly ignorance of an urban mob.

Gentleman, Government, Ignorance, Turbulence, Wary

When we talk about the foreign, the question becomes one of us versus them. But in the end, is one just the opposite side of the other?

Becomes, Ends, Foreign, Opposites, Side, Sides

The playing field is more sacred than the stock exchange, more blessed than Capital Hill or the vaults of Fort Knox. The diamond and the gridiron -- and, to a lesser degree, the court, the rink, the track, and the ring -- embody the American dream of Eden.

Blessed, Dream, Eden, Exchange, Fort

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.

Believe, Capitalist, Fingers, Grimy, Lying, War

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.

Individualist, Ostracism, Pain, Practice, Rugged, Wall

Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint.

Alike, Burdens, Character, Imposes, Integrity, Leadership

Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.

Closed, Democracy, Dissent, Doors, Quiet

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