Charles A. Reich > Quotes

“In northwest Seattle, there is an immensely popular 'old-fashioned' ice cream parlor. It is modern, spotless, and gleaming, bursting with comfortable looking people on a warm summer evening. The parlor is dedicated to nostalgia, from the old-time decor to the striped candy, the ragtime music, the costumes of the smiling young waiters, the Gibson-girl menu with its gold-rush type, and the open-handed hospitality of the Old West. It serves sandwiches, hamburgers, and kiddie 'samiches,' but its specialty is ice-cream concoctions, all of them with special names, including several so vast and elaborate that they cost several dollars and arrive with so much fanfare that all other activities stop as the waiters join in a procession as guards of honor. Nobody seems to care that the sandwiches and even the ice cream dishes have a curious blandness, so that everything tastes rather alike and it is hard to remember what one has eaten. Nothing mars the insistent, bright, wholesome good humor that presses on every side. Yet somehow there is pathos as well. For these patrons are the descendants of pioneers, of people who knew the frontiers, of men who dared the hardships of Chilkoot Pass to seek gold in the Klondike. That is their heritage, but now they only sit amid a sterile model of the past, spooning ice cream while piped-in ragtime tinkles unheard.”
― Charles Reich, The Greening of America

“No person’s gain in wisdom is diminished by anyone else’s gain.”
― Charles A. Reich

“Consciousness I proved unable to change with the changing realities of America. Today it still sees America as if it were a world of small towns and simple virtues. Invention and machinery and production are the equivalent of progress; material success ids the road to happiness, nature is beautiful but must be conquered and put to use. Competition is the law of nature and man; life is a harsh pursuit of individual self-interest. Consciousness I believes that the American dream is still possible, and that success is determined by character, morality, hard work, and self-denial. It does not accept that organizations predominate individuals in American life, or that social problems are due to something other than bad character, or that the possibility of individual success, based on ability and enterprise is largely out of date.”
― Charles A. Reich, The Greening Of America. How The Youth Revolution

“The Vietnam War represents that form of madness in which logic is carried to fantastic extremes. Starting with an initial political-ideological dispute in a country on the other side of the globe, we have butchered, burned and mutilated men, women, and children, laid waste a country and created a science-fiction fantasy of weapons capable of destroying the entire world, building more, more and more weapons until the nation has wasted its own cities, schools, and needs in the effort, impoverishing its people and communal life for this single purpose.”
― Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America

“Not only would Americans have no understanding of the dangers of industrialism; no culture, tradition, social order, or inner knowledge of self by which to guide industrial values and choose among them...Divided up into individual units defined by self-interest, they had no way of thinking for the common good, or thinking ahead, and the anti-intellectual and sometimes childish tendency of Americans to not think at all allowed them to rest easy in this posture”
― Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America, 25th Anniversary Edition

“It couldn’t understand that “private property” in the hands of a corporation was a synonym for quasi-governmental power, far different from the property of an individual. It couldn’t understand the crucial point that collective action against corporate power wouldn’t have been a step toward collectivization, but an effort to preserve democracy in a society that had already been collectivized.”
― Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America

“Consciousness I could not grasp, or could not accept, the reality that the individual was no longer competing against the success of other individuals, but against a system...It could not understand the crucial point that collective action against corporate power would not have been a step toward collectivization, but an effort to preserve democracy in a society that had already been collectivized.”
― Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America, 25th Anniversary Edition

“One of the central aspects of Consciousness II is an acceptance of the priority of institutions, organizations, and society and a belief that the individual must tie his destiny to something of this sort, larger than himself, and subordinate his will to it...He sees his own life and career in terms of progress within a society and within an institution. An established hierarchy and settled procedures are seen as necessary and valuable. Achievements by character and hard work is translated into achievement in terms of meritocracy of education, technical knowledge, and position".”
― Charles A. Reich

“One of the central aspects of Consciousness II is an acceptance of the priority of institutions, organizations, and society and a belief that the individual must tie his destiny to something of this sort, larger than himself, and subordinate his will to it...He sees his own life and career in terms of progress within a society and within an institution. An established hierarchy and settled procedures are seen as necessary and valuable. Achievements by character and hard work is translated into achievement in terms of meritocracy of education, technical knowledge, and position.”
― Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America, 25th Anniversary Edition

“The school is a brutal machine for destruction of the self, con. trolling it, heckling it, hassling it into a thousand busy tasks, a thousand noisy groups, never giving it a moment to establish a knowledge within.”
― Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America