Leadership Consists Not In Degrees Of Technique

The Mystical Nature Of American Consumption Accounts For Its Joylessness. We Spend A Great Deal Of Time In Stores, But If We Don't Seem To Take Much Pleasure In Our Buying, It's Because We're Engaged In The Acts Of Sacrifice And Self-definition. Abashed In The Presence Of Expensive Merchandise, We Recognize Ourselves . . . As Suppliants Admitted To A Shrine.

I Begin To Understand That Failure Is Its Own Reward. It Is In The Effort To Close The Distance Between The Work Imagined And The Work Achieved Wherein It Is To Be Found That The Ceaseless Labor Is The Freedom Of Play, That What’s At Stake Isn’t A Reflection In The Mirror Of Fame But The Escape From The Prison Of The Self.

Let The Rabbit Of Free Enterprise Out Of Its Velveteen Bag And Too Many People Would Have To Be Fired, Too Much Idiocy Exposed To The Light Of Judgment Or Ridicule, Too Much Vanity Sacrificed To The Fires Of Efficiency. Such A Catastrophe Obviously Would Threaten The American Way Of Life, To Say Nothing Of The Belief In Free Markets.

A Society That Presumes A Norm Of Violence And Celebrates Aggression, Whether In The Subway, On The Football Field, Or In The Conduct Of Its Business, Cannot Help Making Celebrities Of The People Who Would Destroy It.

It Is No Accident That Banks Resemble Temples, Preferably Greek, And That The Supplicants Who Come To Perform The Rites Of Deposit And Withdrawal Instinctively Lower Their Voices Into The Registers Of Awe. Even The Most Junior Tellers Acquire Within Weeks Of Their Employment The Officiousness Of Hierophants Tending An Eternal Flame.