More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
the fragility of connection, the allure and risk of illusion, the poignancy of artifacts, and the necessity of carrying on in the face of the demoralizing brokenness of the world.
When an individual person was defenseless, a business was not. The big economic forces had managed to remain free, although virtually everything else had been absorbed by the Government. Laws that had been eased away from the private person still protected property and industry.
“You know, this game has one real advantage over selling people cars and TV sets. With something like this we have to buy. It isn’t a luxury, something big and flashy to impress the neighbors, something we could do without. If we don’t buy this we die. They always said the way to sell something was create anxiety in people. Create a sense of insecurity—tell them they smell bad or look funny. But this makes a joke out of deodorant and hair oil. You can’t escape this. If you don’t buy, they’ll kill you. The perfect sales-pitch. Buy or die—new slogan. Have a shiny new General Electronics H-bomb
...more
Money was the tender in the game; there was no other criterion by which one could tell if he had won or lost.
The covert message of institutions is: ‘Submit to that which you psychologically construe as an authority.’ A good school trains the whole person; it isn’t a matter of data and information; I was trying to make you morally and psychologically complete.
