Christopher Lasch

• "Every age develops its own peculiar forms of pathology, which express in exaggerated form its underlying character structure.“
• "Environmentalism opposes reckless innovation and makes conservation the central order of business.“
• "We are all revolutionaries now, addicts of change.“
• "In our society, daily experience teaches the individual to want and need a never-ending supply of new toys and drugs.“
• "The attempt to redefine the family as a purely voluntary arrangement grows out of the modern delusion that people can keep all their options open all the time.“
• "The left dismisses talk about the collapse of family life and talks instead about the emergence of the growing new diversity of family types.“
• "It is the logic of consumerism that undermines the values of loyalty and permanence and promotes a different set of values that is destructive of family life.“
• "The question of the family now divides our society so deeply that the opposing sides cannot even agree on a definition of the institution they are arguing about.“
• "It is no longer an unwritten law of American capitalism that industry will attempt to maintain wages at a level that allows a single wage to support a family.“
• "The family wage has been eroded by the same developments that have promoted consumerism as a way of life.“
• "A growing awareness of the depth of popular attachment to the family has led some liberals to concede that family is not just a buzzword for reaction.“
• "Liberals subscribe to the new flexible, pluralistic definition of the family their defense of families carries no conviction.“
• "Most women are pragmatists who have allowed extremists on the left and right to manipulate the family issue for their own purposes.“
• "The last three decades have seen the collapse of the family wage system.“
• "The left ask people to believe that there is no conflict between feminism and the family.“
• "The left sees nothing but bigotry and superstition in the popular defense of the family or in popular attitudes regarding abortion, crime, busing, and the school curriculum.“
• "When liberals finally grasped the strength of popular feeling about the family, they cried to appropriate the rhetoric and symbolism of family values for their own purposes.“
• "The hope of a new politics does not lie in formulating a left-wing reply to the right-it lies in rejecting conventional political categories.“
• "Knowledge is what we get when an observer, preferably a scientifically trained observer, provides us with a copy of reality that we can all recognize.“
• "Most of these alternative arrangements, so-called, arise out of the ruins of marriages, not as an improvement of old fashioned marriage.“
• "Conservatives sense a link between television and drugs, but they do not grasp the nature of this connection.“
• "Adherents of the new religious right reject the separation of politics and religion, but they bring no spiritual insights to politics.“
• "The hope of a new politics does not lie in formulating a left-wing reply to the right-it lies in rejecting conventional political categories.“
• "Because politics rests on an irreducible measure of coercion, it can never become a perfect realm of perfect love and justice.“
• "The proper reply to right wing religiosity is not to insist that politics and religion don't mix. This is the stock response of the left.“
• "Adherents of the new religious right reject the separation of politics and religion, but they bring no spiritual insights to politics.“
• "The proper reply to right wing religiosity is not to insist that politics and religion don't mix. This is the stock response of the left.“
• "Ostensibly rigorous and realistic, contemporary conservatism is an ideology of denial. Its symbol is a smile button.“
• "Drugs are merely the most obvious form of addiction in our society. Drug addiction is one of the things that undermines traditional values.“
• "The question of the family now divides our society so deeply that the opposing sides cannot even agree on a definition of the institution they are arguing about.“
• "The model of ownership, in a society organized round mass consumption, is addiction.“
• "In our society, daily experience teaches the individual to want and need a never-ending supply of new toys and drugs.“
• "A society that has made 'nostalgia' a marketable commodity on the cultural exchange quickly repudiates the suggestion that life in the past was in any important way better than life today.“
• "Propaganda in the ordinary sense of the term plays a less important part in a consumer society, where people greet all official pronouncements with suspicion.“
• "In an individualistic culture, the narcissist is God's gift to the world. In a collectivist society, the narcissist is God's gift to the collective.“
• "When liberals finally grasped the strength of popular feeling about the family, they cried to appropriate the rhetoric and symbolism of family values for their own purposes.“
• "Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.“
• "The left has come to regard common sense - the traditional wisdom and folkways of the community - as an obstacle to progress and enlightenment.“

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