A Quote by Lionel Trilling

Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony.

Lionel Trilling

Quote Topics

Humor Candide Ever Generate Impossible Irony Little More Revolutionary Than Weapon

Quote Author

Lionel Trilling
American - Critic
July 4, 1905 - November 5, 1975

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.

Jessamyn West

And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I don’t really mean what I’m saying." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.

David Foster Wallace

As I write, I control my anxiety and anguish thanks to the invaluable aid of irony and humor. But every night I am subdued by an anxiety that knows no irony, and I must wait until the next day to rediscover the blend of anguish and humor that characterizes my writing and that generates my style.

Enrique Vila-Matas

I believe in irony. And if V-Day has taught me anything, it's that if you go out with artistic, outrageous irony and humor, people are drawn to it.

Eve Ensler

Also, everyone thinks they know Candide - you hear people described as 'Panglossian'. So if Candide appears on a poster, it feels familiar.

Mark Ravenhill

The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.

Che Guevara

Writing is a weapon and it’s more powerful than a fist could ever be.

Denzel Washington

Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.

Victor Borge

I've learned you can always achieve more than you thought you could. There are moments when I've walked off the court, and I'm like, 'I don't know how I won that match.' It was actually impossible, but it happened, and then you realize that you can push yourself much further than you ever thought, and you can make the impossible happen.

Venus Williams

He insists on a version of you that is funnier, stranger, more eccentric and prfound thatn you suspect yourself to be--capable of doing more good and more harm in the world than you've ever imagined--it is all but impossible not to believe, at least in his presence and a while after you've left him, that he alone sees through your essence, weighs your true qualities . . . and appreciates you more fully than anyone else ever has.

Michael Cunningham

Revolutionary politics, revolutionary art, and oh, the revolutionary mind, is the dullest thing on earth. When we open a revolutionary review, or read a revolutionary speech, we yawn our heads off. It is true, there is nothing else. Everything is correctly, monotonously, dishearteningly revolutionary. What a stupid word! What a stale fuss!

Wyndham Lewis

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.

Che Guevara

The irony or humor of my pieces is never really calculated, but they somehow always end up that way. Humor, especially when dealing with matters of extreme gravity, has a way of toppling set ideas and opening up new modes of interpretation. Furthermore, adding humor tends to shift the power balance.