A Quote by Lionel 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

Quote Topics

Authoritarian Believe Cynical Form Heart Imagine Living Only Profoundly State Utopia Utopian

Quote Author

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

Utopia is a meta-utopia: the environment in which Utopian experiments may be tried out; the environment in which people are free to do their own thing; the environment which must, to a great extent, be realized first if more particular Utopian visions are to be realized stably.

Robert Nozick

What begins as a Utopian vision, always - always - ends in bloodshed. Because you have to force a utopia on a free people. Free people want to pursue their own happiness, but a one-size-fits-all approach requires herding the free, against their will, into the state's idea of what's right. Then it's not utopia.

Greg Gutfeld

I believe in a lot of astrology. I believe in aliens. I look up into the stars and I imagine: How self-important are we to think that we are the only life-form?

Katy Perry

I believe in a lot of astrology. I believe in aliens... I look up into the stars and I imagine: 'How self-important are we to think that we are the only life-form?'

Katy Perry

We are living in a highly organized state of socialism. The state is all; the individual is of importance only as he contributes to the welfare of the state. His property is only his as the state does not need it. He must hold his life and his possessions at the call of the state.

Bernard Baruch

Wherever you go, whether it be a college campus or the New York Times or ABC News or Venezuela or Cuba or the former Soviet Union, it's amazing how the speech codes and the trying to shut up dissent is a defining aspect of the left because they believe so firmly in their utopian ideals that anyone who would disagree with that utopia is an enemy of the state, and they treat them as such.

Andrew Breitbart

For the state by its nature claims sovereignty, the right to an unlimited development of power, determined only by self-interest. It is by nature anarchistic.

Christian Lous Lange

Amongst my friends, I am known as the most cynical person they know - I'm incredibly cynical. I don't believe in God, I don't believe in the supernatural, I don't believe in anything! And I'm terribly cynical, and somehow or other, all three of my films and much of my television work has been rather sentimental, and 'heartwarming'.

Nigel Cole

I cannot believe this is the end. Nor can I believe that death is more than the blindness of those living. And if this is only the consolation of a heart in its necessity, or that easy faith born of despair, it does not matter, since it gives us courage somehow to face the mornings. Which is as much as the heart can ask at times.

Josephine Winslow Johnson

How can the human race be, like, the only living form in the universe? There have to be other life forms out there. I believe it.

Christopher Mintz-Plasse

The dance form has been a lifestyle that I was initiated to at an early age. It has been the only constant in my life, like a friend bringing happiness and pain. I cannot imagine living without it.

Shobana

A utopia cannot, by de?nition, include boredom, but the 'utopia' we are living in is boring.

Lars Svendsen

Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness.