The ideal of financial success is set before the young by most of the influences that form their minds. In the cinema they see representations of luxury, where plutocrats own marble halls and beautiful ladies in splendid dresses. The hero generally succeeds, in the end, in belonging to this successful class. Even artists come to be judged by the amount of money they make. Merit not measured in money comes to be despised. Every kind of sensitiveness, being a handicap in the struggle, is regarded as a stigma of failure.
Source: "The lessons of experience" (In: Mortals and Others: Bertrand Russell's American Essays, 1931-1935, v.1 (1975))
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