Politics
Trilling's politics have been strongly debated, and like much else in his thought may be described as "complex." A much-quoted summary of Trilling's politics is that he wished to:
- " people who prided themselves on being liberals that liberalism was ... a political position which affirmed the value of individual existence in all its variousness, complexity, and difficulty."
Politically, Trilling was a noted member of the anti-Stalinist left, a position that he maintained to the end of his life.
Read more about this topic: Lionel Trilling
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Of course, in the reality of history, the Machiavellian view which glorifies the principle of violence has been able to dominate. Not the compromising conciliatory politics of humaneness, not the Erasmian, but rather the politics of vested power which firmly exploits every opportunity, politics in the sense of the “Principe,” has determined the development of European history ever since.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self- Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“We are naïve and moralistic women. We are human beings. Who find politics a blight upon the human condition. And do not know how one copes with it except through politics.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)