I begin to understand that failure is its own reward. It is in the effort to close the distance between the work imagined and the work achieved wherein it is to be found that the ceaseless labor is the freedom of play, that whatโs at stake isnโt a reflection in the mirror of fame but the escape from the prison of the self.
Lewis H. LaphamThe figure of the enthusiast who has just discovered jogging or a new way to fix tofu can be said to stand or, more accurately, to tremble on the threshold of conversion, as the representative American
Lewis H. LaphamUnlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence.
Lewis H. LaphamMoney is like fire, an element as little troubled by moralizing as earth, air and water. Men can employ it as a tool or they can dance around it as if it were the incarnation of a god. Money votes socialist or monarchist, finds a profit in pornography or translations from the Bible, commissions Rembrandt and underwrites the technology of Auschwitz. It acquires its meaning from the uses to which it is put.
Lewis H. LaphamPeople may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true.
Lewis H. LaphamLeadership 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. LaphamMost of the ladies and gentlemen who mourn the passing of the nation's leaders wouldn't know a leader if they saw one. If they had the bad luck to come across a leader, they would find out that he might demand something from them, and this impertinence would put an abrupt and indignant end to their wish for his return.
Lewis H. Lapham