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8,096 books
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19,876 voters
“...there must be a sequence to learning, that perseverance and a certain measure of perspiration are indispensable, that individual pleasures must frequently be submerged in the interests of group cohesion, and that learning to be critical and to think conceptually and rigorously do not come easily to the young but are hard-fought victories.”
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
“Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.”
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
“What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer.”
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
“Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?”
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
“The reader must come armed , in a serious state of intellectual readiness. This is not easy because he comes to the text alone. In reading, one's responses are isolated, one'sintellect thrown back on its own resourses. To be confronted by the cold abstractions of printed sentences is to look upon language bare, without the assistance of either beauty or community. Thus, reading is by its nature a serious business. It is also, of course, an essentially rational activity.”
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
― Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Lorien’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Lorien’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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