Why America Failed Quotes

“[I]nfinity is not part of the real world.”
― Morris Berman, Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline

“It is also why there is so little tolerance for substantive dis- sent, or fundamental critique, in America. Since our identity is in fact quite brittle, we have to be constantly telling ourselves how fabulous we are.”
― Morris Berman, Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline

“a “brave new world of affluent depravity.”44 Genovese sees it as ironic that the defeat of the South, of slav- ery, opened the doors to an imperialism that imposed “unprec- edented misery and mass slaughter on the world.”
― Morris Berman, Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline

“Literacy, the most empowering achievement of our civili- zation, is to be replaced by a vague and ill-defined screen savvy. The paper book, the tool that built modernity, is to be phased out in favor of fractured, unfixed information. All in the name of progress.”
― Morris Berman, Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline

“As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much mon- ey will it bring in?     —Alexis de Tocqueville, letter to Ernest de Chabrol, June 9, 1831                                         1”
― Morris Berman, Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline