History is not what happened 200 or 2,000 years ago; it's a story about what happened 200 or 2,000 years ago.
Lewis H. LaphamA society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it.
Lewis H. LaphamUnlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. The mounting of this illusion defines the purpose and accounts for the immense wealth of American sports. It is the ceremony of innocence that the fans pay to see - not the game or the match or the bout, but the ritual portrayal of a world in which time stops and all hope remains plausible, in which everybody present can recover the blameless expectations of a child, where the forces of light always triumph over the powers of darkness.
Lewis H. LaphamAs many as six out of ten American adults have never read a book of any kind, and the bulletins from the nationโs educational frontiers read like the casualty reports from a lost war.
Lewis H. Lapham