We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian.
More Quotes from Lionel Trilling:
Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all to the end that someone else should not perform the same process.Lionel Trilling
A theory of the middle class that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of government as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by government. Somewhere in between and In gradations is the group that has the sense that gov't exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.
Lionel Trilling
We are all ill: but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health.
Lionel Trilling
In the American metaphysic, reality is always material reality, hard, resistant, unformed, impenetrable, and unpleasant.
Lionel Trilling
Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.
Lionel Trilling
Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.
Lionel Trilling
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Based on Keywords: anarchistic, authoritarian, utopia, utopianA good ad which is not run never produces sales.
Leo Burnett
I have faith in my imperfections!
Dana Delany
Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.
Charles Caleb Colton