“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.”
Society
“The left dismisses talk about the collapse of family life and talks instead about the emergence of the growing new diversity of family types.”
FamilyAll Quotes by Christopher Lasch
“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.”
Society“Liberals subscribe to the new flexible, pluralistic definition of the family their defense of families carries no conviction.”
Family“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.”
Family“Environmentalism opposes reckless innovation and makes conservation the central order of business.”
Business“Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.”
Success“Every age develops its own peculiar forms of pathology, which express in exaggerated form its underlying character structure.”
Age“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.”
Society“The model of ownership, in a society organized round mass consumption, is addiction.”
Society“Adherents of the new religious right reject the separation of politics and religion, but they bring no spiritual insights to politics.”
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.”
Politics“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.”
Family“Most women are pragmatists who have allowed extremists on the left and right to manipulate the family issue for their own purposes.”
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.”
Family“The left has come to regard common sense - the traditional wisdom and folkways of the community - as an obstacle to progress and enlightenment.”
Wisdom“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.”
Family“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.”
Family“Conservatives sense a link between television and drugs, but they do not grasp the nature of this connection.”
Nature“Ostensibly rigorous and realistic, contemporary conservatism is an ideology of denial. Its symbol is a smile button.”
Smile“We are all revolutionaries now, addicts of change.”
Change