Quote by Lionel Trilling
We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of st

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. – Lionel Trilling

Other quotes by Lionel Trilling

There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination. – Lionel Trilling

Category:
Imagination
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Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony. – Lionel Trilling

Category:
Humor
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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

Category:
legal
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Other Quotes from
Paradise, Utopia
category

We, who have already borne on the road to Paradise the lives of the best among us, want a difficult, erect, implacable Paradise; a Paradise where one can never rest and which has, beside the threshold of the gates, angels with swords. – J. A. Primo De Rivera

It gets to seem as if way back in the Garden of Eden after the Fall, Adam and Eve had begged the Lord to forgive them and He, in his boundless exasperation, had said, All right, then. Stay. Stay in the Garden. Get civilized. Procreate. Muck it up. And they did. – Diane Arbus

A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death. – Ernest Hemingway

I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell. – Jean Rostand

Random Quotes

The middle class, one of the great achievements in history, is becoming more of a relic than a reality. – Jon Meacham

Category:
History

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth. – Honore de Balzac

Category:
Intelligence

The feel and beauty of finely crafted wood – the refreshing smell of your workshop – the absorbing joy of cutting and joining that makes the hours race by – These are the reasons you love woodworking. – Jack Neff, Make Your Woodworking Pay for Itself, 1996

Category:
Woodworking

Our moral theorists seem never content with the normal. Why must it always be a contest between fornication, obesity and laziness, and celibacy, fasting and hard labor? – Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)

Category:
Moderation