The future turns out to be something that you make instead of find. It isn't waiting for your arrival, either with an arrest warrant or a band, nor is it any further away than the next sentence, the next best guess, the next sketch for the painting of a life portrait that might become a masterpiece. The future is an empty canvas or a blank sheet of paper, and if you have the courage of your own thought and your own observation, you can make of it what you will.
Lewis H. LaphamThe survival of American democracy depends less on the size of its armies than on the capacity of its individual citizens to rely... on the strength of their own thought.
Lewis H. LaphamDemocracy is born in dirt, nourished by the digging up and turning over as much of it as can be brought within reach of a television camera or subpoena.
Lewis H. LaphamTalk about the flag or drugs or crime (never about race or class or justice) and follow the yellow brick road to the wonderful land of consensus. In place of honest argument among consenting adults the politicians substitute a lullaby for frightened children: the pretense that conflict doesn't really exist, that we have achieved the blessed state in which we no longer need politics.
Lewis H. Lapham