Charles A. Reich quotes

The great crime of our time, says Vonnegut, was to do too much good secretly, too much harm openly. (Charles A. Reich)
The crucial fact to realize about all the powerful machinery of the Corporate State - its laws, structure, political system - is that it possesses no mind. View quote
Charles A. Reich
My goal in life is to make people think. If I do that, I've been a success. View quote
Charles A. Reich
The corporate state is an immensely powerful machine, ordered, legalistic, rational, yet utterly out of human control, wholly and perfectly indifferent to any human values. View quote
Charles A. Reich
Marx saw exploitation in terms of the rewards of human labor, but we can see it in terms of all the values of our society. View quote
Charles A. Reich
Perhaps the greatest and least visible form of impoverishment caused by the Corporate State is the destruction of community. View quote
Charles A. Reich
Nothing makes us angrier than the fear that some pleasure is being enjoyed by others but forever denied to us. View quote
Charles A. Reich
Surely this new age is not a repudiation of, but a fulfillment of, the American dream. What were the machines for, unless to give man a new freedom to choose how he would live? View quote
Charles A. Reich
The presumed causes of Americas troubles can be summed up simply: the evils of unlimited competition, and abuses by those with economic power. View quote
Charles A. Reich
One cannot sell anything to a satisfied man. Ergo, make him want something new, or take away something that he has and then sell him something to take its place. View quote
Charles A. Reich
Technology has deprived the family of almost all its functions. (Charles A. Reich)
there is every reason to fear that the State is growing ever more powerful, more autonomous, more indifferent to its own inhabitants. View quote
Charles A. Reich
The American dream was not, at least at the beginning, a rags-to-riches type of narrow materialism. View quote
Charles A. Reich
Of all the qualities of human beings that are injured, narrowed, or repressed in the Corporate State, it is consciousness, the most precious and the most fragile, that suffers the most. View quote
Charles A. Reich
America is dealing death, not only to people of other lands, but to its own people. So say the most thoughtful and passionate of our youth, from California to Connecticut. View quote
Charles A. Reich
Our history shows that what we must do is assert domination over the machine, to guide it so that it works for the values of our choice. View quote
Charles A. Reich
Once a person reaches Consciousness III, there is no returning to a lower consciousness. View quote
Charles A. Reich
Innocence and optimism have one basic failing: they have no fundamental depth. View quote
Charles A. Reich
One of the most clearly marked trends for over twenty years has been the decline in civil liberties. View quote
Charles A. Reich
We do not see it because we can not afford to-because the truth is too explosive. View quote
Charles A. Reich
Moreover, the human condition, if that is what it is, has been getting steadily worse in the Corporate State; more and more life-denying just as life should be opening up. (Charles A. Reich)
The machine itself has begun to do the work of revolution. The State is now generating forces that will accomplish what no revolutionaries could accomplish by themselves. View quote
Charles A. Reich
It is not the misuse of power that is evil; the very existence of power is an evil. View quote
Charles A. Reich
No person's gain in wisdom is diminished by anyone else's gain. View quote
Charles A. Reich
Organizations are not really "owned" by anyone. What formerly constituted ownership was split up into stockholders' rights to share in profits, management's power to set policy, employees' right to status and security, government's right to regulate. Thus older forms of wealth were replaced by new forms. View quote
Charles A. Reich