Charles A. Reich

“"The Greening of America turns 40 : Q&A: Charles Reich", by Daniel Schwartz, CBC News (23 September 2010)”

“"Charles Reich’s Journey From the Yale Law Journal to the New York Times Best-Seller List: The Personal History of The Greening of America" by Rodger Citron, in The New York Law School Law Review, Vol. 52, (2007/2008), p. 387”

“I see self-destruction now on a grand scale. That is, the unwillingness to pay for the things society needs. That's the most basic kind of self-destruction. That we're not prepared to pay for schools, we're not prepared to pay for highways. That is self-destruction. What are we doing to ourselves? It is nuts.”

“It gave people a great leap of hope, made people feel good. This was a world that could get better, a whole lot better. I might say to those who stuck with it in some way or other they will still swear by the values of the '60s.”

“What we need is a concept of "gross national cost." Life is a balance sheet, not simply economic growth. It is income and outgo. And until we know what the cost of growth is we will continue to operate under an illusion. As long as we consider only the growth of goods and ignore the growth of personal and community well-being, we will be impoverished by growth. That is what is happening in our society today.”

“As Reagan conservatism is becoming less popular, people are asking: Where do we go from here? We can also ask: Does the last era of liberalism provide any indications as to where we might or should go from here? The liberalism of the nineteen-thirties emerged after the catastrophe that resulted from the conservatism of the nineteen-twenties. Conservatives had been in power for a long time, and ended by nearly wrecking the country. Liberals came along and performed a rescue operation. Ironically, they are credited with saving the establishment, which they surely did.”

“The country we live in is a laboratory. We have one experiment after another. Unfortunately, it is not a laboratory where no one gets hurt: some lives are enhanced, others are ruined. We have to view our society with concern and passion, and see what we can learn from each of our experiments. When we get upset and angry about politics — whether it is conservative, liberal, or whatever — we tend to think in terms of right and wrong, not what we can learn.”

“Once a person reaches Consciousness III, there is no returning to a lower consciousness.”

“No person's gain in wisdom is diminished by anyone else's gain.”

“Surely this new age is not a repudiation of, but a fulfillment of, the American dream. What were the machines for, unless to give man a new freedom to choose how he would live?”

“Our history shows that what we must do is assert domination over the machine, to guide it so that it works for the values of our choice.”

“The crucial fact to realize about all the powerful machinery of the Corporate State — its laws, structure, political system — is that it possesses no mind.”

“One of the most clearly marked trends for over twenty years has been the decline in civil liberties.”

“"there is every reason to fear that the State is growing ever more powerful, more autonomous, more indifferent to its own inhabitants."”

“We do not see it because we can not afford to-because the truth is too explosive.”

“Nothing makes us angrier than the fear that some pleasure is being enjoyed by others but forever denied to us.”

“Of all the qualities of human beings that are injured, narrowed, or repressed in the Corporate State, it is consciousness, the most precious and the most fragile, that suffers the most.”

“A work of art is not valued because it changes itself for each person who views it, it retains its own integrity and thus means something unique and marvelous to those who see it.”

“Moreover, the human condition, if that is what it is, has been getting steadily worse in the Corporate State; more and more life-denying just as life should be opening up.”

“The machine itself has begun to do the work of revolution. The State is now generating forces that will accomplish what no revolutionaries could accomplish by themselves.”