William Irwin Thompson

From The American Replacement of Nature: The Everyday Acts and Outrageous Evolution of Economic Life

[In America,] history is replaced by movies, education is replaced with entertainment ... Entertainment has now replaced education as the basic process of socialization.

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Disneyism is the world's cleverest and most successful new religion.... Attacks ... are, like the Ghost Dance of the Plains Indians against the railroads, just simply not powerful enough to stop the electronic spread of Disneyism, Hollywood movies and TV programs, rock and roll, Coca-Cola, and McDonalds.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

From Essays: Second Series

The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry.

Daniel Bell

The gradual electrification of the world was more fraught with consequences, and has been more responsible for the modification of life, than the political events which are the foci of the historian's concern.