“Laissez-faire is dead and the modern state has become responsible for the modern economy as a whole. The task of insuring the continuity of the standard of life for its people is now as much the fundamental duty of the state as the preservation of national independence.” — Walter Lippmann, Godkin Lectures, 1934.
It should be noted here and now (if not earlier) that the Lippmann quotes being posted to this site are sourced from Ronald Steel’s Walter Lippmann and the American Century, published in 1980 by the Atlantic Monthly Press.
“It is labor organized that alone can stand between America and the creation of a permanent, servile class.” — Lippmann, Drift and Mastery
“The curse of great fortunes is the degradation of the poor.” — Walter Lippmann
“Farmers without land, workers without jobs, ordinary men and women without hope, all were fodder for visionaries promising the earth.” – MacMillan, Paris 1919
“Dying used to be accompanied by a prescribed set of customs. Guides to ars moriendi, the art of dying, were extraordinarily popular; a 1415 medieval Latin text was reprinted in more than a hundred editions across Europe. Reaffirming one’s faith, repenting one’s sins, and letting go of one’s worldly possessions and desires were crucial, and the guides provided families with prayers and questions for the dying in order to put them in the right frame of mind during their final hours. Last words came to hold a particular place of reverence. These days, swift catastrophic illness is the exception; for most people, death comes only after long medical struggle with an incurable condition–advanced cancer, progressive organ failure (usually the heart, kidney, or liver), or the multiple debilities of very old age. In all such cases, death is certain, but the timing isn’t. So everyone struggles with this uncertainty–with how, and when, to accept that the battle is lost. As for last words, they hardly seem to exist anymore. Technology sustains our organs until we are well past the point of awareness and coherence.” — Atul Gawande, “Letting Go”
“People who don’t know much tend not to recognize their ignorance, and so fail to seek better information.” — James Surowiecki, “Greater Fools”
“Every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.” — Alan Shepard, pilot of Freedom 7, May 5, 1961
“There is no sufficiency principle, no ability to say ‘enough.’ Every last scrap of material, every last inch of earth, every last iota of human attention and experience, must become a commodity in order to feed the market maw. There is no other option. A system that supposedly embodies ‘choice’ in the end doesn’t give us any. The mechanism grinds on, out of synch with both the natural systems that sustain it and the needs of the humans who comprise it. ‘Prosperity’ becomes another word for ecological and social dysfunction, and a staggering increase in illth. This dysfunction is a daily experience for most of us. Yet for most economists it does not exist. In their view an increase of expenditure is by definition an increase in well-being, so there is no need to inquire further. To the contrary, problems make the GDP go up. Cancer begets costly cancer treatments; stress leads to the consumption of prescription drugs, and on and on.” — Bollier and Rowe, “The ‘Illth’ of Nations” (http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.2/jonathan_rowe_david_bollier_economy_commons.php)
“We always tear our Gods to bits, and eat the bits we like.” — Adam Gopnik, “What Did Jesus Do?”
“Sir Thomas Gresham, writing on the coinage, lays it down as a principle that, if you have in a country good coins and deteriorated coins of the same metal current side by side, the bad will drive out the good, and Gresham’s law may often be applied to literature, to art and, especially, to journalism. The largest circulations have often been attained by newspapers not exhibiting the highest characteristics; indeed, newspapers have been known suddenly to reach enormous sales by publishing articles describing the careers of notorious criminals.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. IV
“While life without industry is guilt, industry without art is brutality.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, regarding the work of Ruskin
“We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth.” — Tony Judt, “Ill Fares the Land”