We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle-class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.

The news appeals to the same jaded appetite that makes a child tire of a toy as soon as it becomes familiar and demand a new one in its place.

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.

Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.

Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it.

Every age develops its own peculiar forms of pathology, which express in exaggerated form its underlying character structure.

It's not about winning. It's the enjoyment of doing it - it gets your brain going.