9 quotes
The gap between our feelings and our social observation is dangerously wide.
Realism and the Contemporary Novel (1961)
Every aspect of personal life is radically affected by the quality of general life, and yet the general life is seen at its most important in completely personal terms.
Realism and the Contemporary Novel (1961)
Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.
Keywords (1983)
It is then in making hope practical, rather than despair convincing, that we must resume and change and extend our campaigns.
The Politics of Nuclear Disarmament (1980)
If from poetry we expect a succession of signals for the release of miscellaneous private emotion we are likely to find Tears, Idle Tears valuable.
Reading and Criticism (1950)
Real independence is a time of new and active creation: people sure enough of themselves to discard their baggage; knowing the past is past, as shaping history, but with a new confident sense of the present and the future, where the decisive meanings and values will be made.
The shaping influence of economic change can of course be distinguished, as most notably in the period with which this book is concerned. But the difficulty lies in estimating the final importance of a factor which never, in practice, appears in isolation.
Culture and Society (1958)
We all like to think of ourselves as a standard, and I can see that it is genuinely difficult for the English middle class to suppose that the working class is not desperately anxious to become just like itself. I am afraid this must be unlearned.
Culture and Society (1958)
My own view is that if, in a socialist society, the basic cultural skills are made widely available, and the channels of communication widened and cleared, as much as possible has been done in the way of preparation, and what then emerges will be an actual response to the whole reality, and so valuable.
Culture and Society (1958)