The playing field is more sacred than the stock exchange, more blessed than Capital Hill or the vaults … - Lewis H. Lapham

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Our search for such [moral] principles can start with. . . the unconditional imperative to acknowledge every person as a person. If we ask for the contents given by this absolute, we find, first, something negative-the command not to treat a person as a thing. This seems little, but it is much. It is the core of the principle of justice.

Lewis H. Lapham

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

Same Author Quotes

Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character.

Character, Degrees, Leadership, Technique

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.

Blessed, Children, Class, Crime, Politicians, State

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.

Business, Football, People, Presumes, Society, Violence

America is about class. To pretend that it isn't is very ignorant. No society has ever existed without some kind of a ruling class.

America, Class, Ignorant, Kind, Ruling, Society

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