Quotes by Philip Slater

“If we define pornography as any message from any communication medium that is intended to arouse sexual excitement, then it is clear that most advertisements are covertly pornographic.”

“I doubt that we Americans can come to terms with our money neuroses without understanding the more florid pathology of the very rich for it is our envy and admiration of the rich that supports their habit and keeps us hooked ourselves”

“A true community maximizes the potential of whatever human resources exist within it (by allowing for all possible combinations), while networks minimize such utilization, since its limited by each individuals capacity to absorb unsettling stimuli (new combinations).”

“Change can take place only when liberal and radical pressures are both strong. Intelligent liberals have always recognized the debt they owe to radicals, whose existence permits liberals to push further than they would otherwise have dared, all the while posing as compromisers and mediators. Radicals, however, have been somewhat less sensible of their debt to liberals, partly because of the rather single-minded discipline radicals are almost forced to maintain, plagued as they always are by liberal backsliding and timidity on the one hand and various forms of self-destructiveness and romantic posing on the other.... Liberal reforms and radical change”

At a conservative estimate, there are probably a million men and women in their twenties and thirties who would happily work long hours doing what most needs to be done, if they were paid something for it.

Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.

People can bear anything.