Why, I ask, why isnt it possible that advertising as a whole is a fant — David Riesman

"The Autonomous. In the case of someone like Bertrand Russell or Toscanini, one feels an essential aliveness of spirit that reflexively keeps the body alive too, in the face of the inevitable physiological catabolisms. … Such men are not necessarily “balanced” or “well-adjusted” people: they may … get along well with very few people, or prefer the “company” of dead people. … One can see in such cases a passionate interest or preoccupation which has remained alive since childhood—though perhaps newly justified or rediscovered in middle life. … Such individuals are fairly immune to cultural changes, or to cultural definitions of their own physical changes: they carry their preservative, their “spirits,” within. … As long as the body does not actively prevent, these men are immortal because of their ability to renew themselves."

"Parents today are the stage managers for the meetings of three- and four-year-olds, just as, in earlier eras, the adults managed marriages."

"Words not only affect us temporarily; they change us, they socialize or unsocialize us."

"The media, far from being a conspiracy to dull the political sense of the people, could be viewed as a conspiracy to disguise the extent of political indifference."

"The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other."

"Etiquette can be at the same time a means of approaching people and of staying clear of them."