There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination.
Lionel TrillingOur culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.
Lionel TrillingProbably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony.
Lionel TrillingA 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 government as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by government. Somewhere in between and In gradations is the group that has the sense that gov't exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.
Lionel TrillingAny historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing - he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.
Lionel Trilling