Christopher Lasch Quotes

“Because it equates tradition with prejudice, the left finds itself increasingly unable to converse with ordinary people in their common language”

“I despise the cowardly clinging to life, purely for the sake of life, that seems so deeply ingrained in the American temperament.”

“Man’s collective mastery of nature— even if we could ignore the mounting evidence that this too is largely an illusion— can hardly be expected to confer a sense of confidence and well- being when it coexists with centralizing forces that have deprived individuals of any mastery over the concrete, immediate conditions of their existence. The collective control allegedly conferred by science is an abstraction that has little resonance in everyday life.”

“The best defenses against the terrors of existence are the homely comforts of love, work, and family life, which connect us to a world that is independent of our wishes yet responsive to our needs. It is through love and work, as Freud noted in a characteristically pungent remark, that we exchange crippling emotional conflict for ordinary unhappiness. Love and work enable each of us to explore a small corner of the world and to come to accept it on its own terms. But our society tends either to devalue small comforts or else to expect too much of them. Our standards of "creative, meaningful work" are too exalted to survive disappointment. Our ideal of "true romance" puts an impossible burden on personal relationships. We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves.”

“The capacity for loyalty is stretched too thin when it tries to attach itself to the hypothetical solidarity of the human race.”

“The family is a haven in a heartless world.”