Charles A. Reich: Other

Charles A. Reich was American lawyer. Explore interesting quotes on other.
Charles A. Reich: 110   quotes 2   likes

“All of us are responding to the fact there is no system that can keep any promises. Everybody is fighting each other under the illusion that it is the "other people" that are causing the problem.”

Charles A. Reich

The Liberals' Mistake (1987)
Context: All of us are responding to the fact there is no system that can keep any promises. Everybody is fighting each other under the illusion that it is the "other people" that are causing the problem. We don't realize that we are all in the same boat. We are all suffering from the absence of a system that can pull us together and assure us that the results of each person's work will come back to him and enhance his life in some way.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans today offer any vision of how we can overcome our present difficulties and build a more satisfying life. Both offer merely palliatives and, at best, a holding pattern. We have to look beyond the politicians to see a different future.

People , Problem , Fight

“The country we live in is a laboratory. We have one experiment after another. Unfortunately, it is not a laboratory where no one gets hurt: some lives are enhanced, others are ruined.”

Charles A. Reich

The Liberals' Mistake (1987)
Context: The country we live in is a laboratory. We have one experiment after another. Unfortunately, it is not a laboratory where no one gets hurt: some lives are enhanced, others are ruined. We have to view our society with concern and passion, and see what we can learn from each of our experiments. When we get upset and angry about politics — whether it is conservative, liberal, or whatever — we tend to think in terms of right and wrong, not what we can learn.

Hurt , Country

“But we have managed to reverse that. Today, a great many people cannot find any work. People are dispossessed and cannot support themselves or their families. Many are homeless. For many others, work has become a rat race: something to be endured, not enjoyed.”

Charles A. Reich

The Liberals' Mistake (1987)
Context: The liberals were right when they insisted that we had enough food and goods for all of our people. But they did not — and we still do not — know how to distribute those goods in a rational way. We have failed to figure out how to turn this abundance into an advantage. The liberals were also right about labor-saving. If we evenly distributed the work that needs to be done, there ought to be a lot of time left over for everybody to have the leisure that people need. But we have managed to reverse that. Today, a great many people cannot find any work. People are dispossessed and cannot support themselves or their families. Many are homeless. For many others, work has become a rat race: something to be endured, not enjoyed.
Today we are witnessing an impoverishment: the apparent drying up of resources for all kinds of things that are badly needed. We seem to have no money for housing, for education, or for health and social services. And yet we have a deficit, and we are told by candidates for public office that we must cut the federal budget even more. This impoverishment is a mystery.

People , Family , Support

“Nothing makes us angrier than the fear that some pleasure is being enjoyed by others but forever denied to us.”

Charles A. Reich book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter X : Beyond Youth: Recovery Of Self, p. 279

Pleasure , Fear

“The question was what's happening to the individual in America? Is the individual going the way of the environment, being destroyed? In other words, were we becoming the creatures of the machine?
That was the way people thought in the '60s. Now maybe that's passé today but that's the kind of thing people thought about. Are we turning into machines? They wanted to rebel against that.
Their rebellion cannot be called a success by any means, far from it. Those of us who tried are very grateful that we tried to the degree we did. Anybody who achieved any success against the machine feels good about it.”

Charles A. Reich

The Greening of America turns 40 (2010)

People , Way , Feeling , Question

“It gave people a great leap of hope, made people feel good. This was a world that could get better, a whole lot better. I might say to those who stuck with it in some way or other they will still swear by the values of the '60s.”

Charles A. Reich

The Greening of America turns 40 (2010)

People , World , Hope , Way

“There were various kinds of direct action in the nineteen-sixties: the Civil Rights movement, in which minorities realized that nobody would do anything for them, that they had to do things for themselves; the women's movement, in which women realized they themselves had to do something about their rights; the environmental movement; and other social movements. The point is that people could not get what they wanted through the system — they had to get it directly. It is no wonder that what began as an idealistic concern for those who were deprived of their rights led to a great deal of selfishness by those who were not deprived. And here lies the affinity between the radicalism of the nineteen-sixties and the conservatism of the nineteen-eighties. Both grew from the same soil: They are different responses to the same problem.”

Charles A. Reich

The Liberals' Mistake (1987)

Women , People , Problem , Selfishness

“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.”

Charles A. Reich book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter I : The Coming American Revolution, p. 3, opening lines

Death , People , Youth , Passion