Famous quotes containing the word trilling:
“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 (19051975)
“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 govt as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by govt. Somewhere in between and in gradations is the group that has the sense that govt exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.”
—Lionel Trilling (19051975)
“The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.”
—Lionel Trilling (19051975)