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His purpose is therapeutic. A man at play with the freedoms of his mind, believing that it is allegiance to the truth and not the flag that rescues the citizens of a democracy from the prisons of their selfishness and greed, Twain aims to blow away with a blast of laughter the pestilent hospitality tents of a society making itself sick with its consumption of “sweet-smelling, sugar-coated lies.”

— Lewis H. Lapham

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More quotes by Lewis H. Lapham

It isn't money itself that causes the trouble, but the use of money as votive offering and pagan ornament.

Money And Class In America (1989)

The substitution of meaning accounts for the grasping of misers as well as the extravagance of spendthrifts. Karl Marx well understood this peculiar transformation of flesh into coin.

Money And Class In America (1989)

The world goes on as before, and it turns out that nobody else seems to to notice the unbearable lightness of being.

Money And Class In America (1989)

We are a people captivated by the power and romance of metaphor, forever seeking the invisible through the image of the visible.

Waiting For The Barbarians (1997)

Unlike every other other nation in the world, the United States defines itself as a hypothesis and constitutes itself as an argument.

Waiting For The Barbarians (1997)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Lewis H. Lapham (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.