Expansion Quotes - page 15
Kolakowski, as we will see, has clearly depicted the religious life and the forms of community constructed by the cultured strata of the Dutch bourgeoisie. Spinoza lives in this world, with a vast network of simple and sociable friendships and correspondences. But for certain determinate strata of the bourgeoisie the sweetness of the cultured and sedate life is accompanied, without any contradiction, by an association with a capitalist Power ('potestas'), expressed in very mature terms. This is the condition of a Dutch bourgeois man. We could say the same thing for the other genius of that age, Rembrandt van Rijn. On his canvases the power of light is concentrated with intensity on the figures of a bourgeois world in terrific expansion. It is a prosaic but very powerful society, which makes poetry without knowing it because it has the force to do so.
Rembrandt
In man a working level of narcissism is inseparable from self-esteem, from a basic sense of self-worth. We have learned, mostly from Alfred Adler, that what man needs most is to feel secure in his self-esteem. But man is not just a blind glob of idling protoplasm, but a creature with a name who lives in a world of symbols and dreams and not merely matter. His sense of self-worth is constituted symbolically, his cherished narcissism feeds on symbols, on an abstract idea of his own worth, an idea composed of sounds, words, and images, in the air, in the mind, on paper. And this means that man's natural yearning for organismic activity, the pleasures of incorporation and expansion, can be fed limitlessly in the domain of symbols and so into immortality. The single organism can expand into dimensions of worlds and times without moving a physical limb; it can take eternity into itself even as it gaspingly dies.
Ernest Becker
American business is like no other in history. It is owned by millions, it employs millions more, it serves all 190 million of our people. The promise for their lives rests upon the performance of your enterprise. While some of you may not be interested in our success, I can assure you that we here in Washington are greatly interested in your success. I am glad I can say today that no businessmen anywhere have ever at any time enjoyed the measure of success that American businessmen are enjoying now. For 42 consecutive months, we have had the longest and the largest peacetime expansion of our economy on record. These years from 1961 through 1964 are going into the record books as the most prosperous years of our history. It is prosperity not just for businessmen--it is prosperity for all the people of this Nation.
Lyndon B. Johnson
