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Quotes from Notebook entry — Lionel Trilling

1905–1975 United States

← All quotes by Lionel Trilling

3 quotes

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.

Notebook entry (1948)

If one defends the bourgeois, philistine virtues, one does not defend them merely from the demonism or bohemianism of the artist but from the present bourgeoisie itself.

Notebook entry (1951)

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.

Notebook entry (1946)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Lionel Trilling (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.