Among all the emotions, the rich have the least talent for love. It is possible to love one's dog, dress or duck-shooting hat, but a human being presents a more difficult problem. The rich might wish to experience feelings of affection, but it is almost impossible to chip away the enamel of their narcissism. They take up all the space in all the mirrors in the house. Their children, who represent the most present and therefore the most annoying claim on their attention, usually receive the brunt of their irritation.

Label celebrity a consumer society's most precious consumer product, and eventually it becomes the hero with a thousand faces, the packaging of the society's art and politics, the framework of its commerce, and the stuff of its religion.

Leadership 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.

[For American consumer society], the country's reserves of ignorance constitute a natural resource as precious as the Mississippi River or the long-lost herds of buffalo.

His administration apparently means to define itself as a television program instead of a government...I don't know if it can please both its sponsors and its intended audience.

The American press is, and always has been, a booster press, its editorial pages characteristically advancing the same arguments as the paid advertising copy.

As many as six out of ten American adults have never read a book of any kind, and the bulletins from the nation’s educational frontiers read like the casualty reports from a lost war.