I never can pass by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without thinking of it not as a gallery of living portraits but as a cemetery of tax-deductible wealth.
Lewis H. Lapham

If a foreign country doesn't look like a middle-class suburb of Dallas or Detroit, then obviously the natives must be dangerous as well as badly dressed.
Lewis H. Lapham

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.
Lewis H. Lapham

Of what does politics consist except the making of imperfect decisions, many of them unjust and quite a few of them deadly?
Lewis H. Lapham

People may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true.
Lewis H. Lapham

The supply of government exceeds demand.
Lewis H. Lapham

Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence.
Lewis H. Lapham