"The human need for language is not simply for the transmission of meaning, it is at the same time listening to and affirming a person's existence."

Previous Quote

The reward of commercial civilization is the ability to consume a never-ending array of products.There are limits beyond which commodities cannot be multiplied without preventing their consumers from affirming themselves through the exercise of their personal freedom.When market dependence reaches a certain threshold it deprives people of their power to live creatively and to act autonomously. And precisely because this new impotence is so deeply experienced, it is expressed with difficulty.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson