A Quote by Lewis H. Lapham

[For American consumer society], the country's reserves of ignorance constitute a natural resource as precious as the Mississippi River or the long-lost herds of buffalo. — © Lewis H. Lapham
[For American consumer society], the country's reserves of ignorance constitute a natural resource as precious as the Mississippi River or the long-lost herds of buffalo.
As founder and co-chair of the upper Mississippi River Congressional task force, I have long sought to preserve the river's health and historical multiple uses, including as a natural waterway and a home to wildlife, for the benefit of future generations of Americans.
Label celebrity a consumer society's most precious consumer product, and eventually it becomes the hero with a thousand faces, the packaging of the society's art and politics, the framework of its commerce, and the stuff of its religion.
The river itself has no beginning or end. In its beginning, it is not yet the river; in the end it is no longer the river. What we call the headwaters is only a selection from among the innumerable sources which flow together to compose it. At what point in its course does the Mississippi become what the Mississippi means?
Poetry is a natural energy resource of our country. It has no energy crisis, possessing a potential that will last as long as the country. Its power is equal to that of any country in the world.
With us, when you speak of ‘the river,’ though there be many, you mean always the same one, the great river, the shifting, unappeasable god of the country, feared and loved the Mississippi.
Mississippi is a beautiful, powerful state. We have many natural resources: from the fertile soil that produces our crops to the beautiful coastline that draws visitors from around the world. But Mississippi's greatest resource has always been and will always be our people.
One of the first things I did as a new Member of Congress was help form a bipartisan Mississippi River Caucus so we could work together from both the North and the South in order to draw attention to the resources that are needed along the Mississippi River.
Water is the most precious, limited natural resource we have in this country...But because water belongs to no one - except the people - special interests, including government polluters, use it as their private sewers.
You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources?! Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear cut in the forest? Have you seen a polluted river? Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource! They're going to strip mine your soul. They're going to clear cut your best thoughts for the sake of profit unless you learn to resist, because the profit system follows the path of least resistance and following the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked!
Important reserves of natural resources, like petroleum and precious metals, are the bulwarks for laying the foundations for the future.
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore, in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
To know that children are suffering and going without food is intolerable in a society such as ours. I hope that all our leaders, in both the public and private sectors, will work tirelessly to eradicate hunger. We all have a responsibility to bring back life to our most precious natural resource.
Young people, I happen to believe, are the world's most precious natural resource.
Clearly we're in historic times here. We have - one of the tributaries of the Mississippi River is a river called the Merrimack. And the crest areas there - they're going to be a number of feet, 2, 3, 4, over what they were in '93 or '82. And on the Mississippi River itself, down below St. Louis, we're still projecting a couple of feet over that historic number. So the bottom line is there's a significant amount of water that's causing evacuations and challenges throughout that whole area.
I believe deeply that children are more powerful than oil, more beautiful than rivers, more precious than any other natural resource a country can have.
My favorite figure of the American author is that of a man who breeds a favorite dog, which he throws into the Mississippi River for the pleasure of making a splash. The river does not splash, but it drowns the dog.
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