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 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 Trilling
Related For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled... FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT The reformocons court right-wing censure simply by acknowledging that the middle class is under pres... GEORGE PACKER White America is tortured by black America's failure to thrive, and all that guilt and anxiety h... JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER Government "help" to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a gove... AYN RAND Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only wa... AYN RAND [The ruling class] sees people in the working class as being almost animals. It sees itself as being... EDWARD BOND Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in d... RONALD REAGAN The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point... FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a poin... FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its ... BARUCH SPINOZA Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its ... BARUCH (_BENEDICT DE) SPINOZA The government doesn't want egg on its face by giving money, and then being pilloried by one group o... ANDREW GEORGE The government doesn't want egg on its face by giving money, and then being pilloried by one group o... ANDREW GEORGE The Conservative party is at its strongest when it's not the party that says there is no role fo... GEORGE OSBORNE The society of merchants can be defined as a society in which things disappear in favor of signs. Wh... ALBERT CAMUS We have seen a central government promote the power of labor-union bosses, and in turn be supported ... ROBERT W. WELCH, JR. Eugenics is not just a tool of totalitarianism. Eugenics, as it was conceived, could not be anything... A.E. SAMAAN I think that the press has a duty and an obligation to report on local government, state government,... MARK MCKINNON I fear that the "democracy" we allege in this country is an illusion, another deception with which t... CAMILLO MAC BICA If this country is really to go forward along the path of social and economic justice, there must be... THEODORE ROOSEVELT Every group has a right to put its point of view. But ultimately it is the government of India that ... ABHISHEK SINGHVI The government will join, notwithstanding its failure to prepare, its neglect in co-operating with i... STEPHEN HARPER Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one - in particular, dullness in par... WALTER BAGEHOT The Iranian government is undoubtedly a severe danger to its own population, but not beyond that. NOAM CHOMSKY If experience has established any one thing in this world, it has established this: that it is well ... MATTHEW ARNOLD In the end, there is no absence of irony: the integrity of what is sacred to Native Americans will b... WINONA LADUKE Government has laid its hand on health, housing, farming, industry, commerce, education, and to an e... RONALD REAGAN China's idea of fair trade is government subsidies of its textile and apparel exports to the Uni... VIRGINIA FOXX The Church, however, is a self-governing society, distinct from the State, having its officers and l... CHARLES HODGE American democracy in the past has always been known for its large middle class and its relatively f... OS GUINNESS The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to d... LENIN (VLADIMIR ULYANOV) The government being the peoples business, it necessarily follows that its operations should be at a... WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN The government being the people's business, it necessarily follows that its operations should be at ... WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN The situation is deteriorating. We are seeing more repression every day by a government that is on i... VLADIMIRO ROCA I do not know of any environmental group in any country that does
not view its government as an adv... GRO HARLEM BRUNDTLAND Justice is the object of government, and those who support the government, must be agreed as to the ... LYSANDER SPOONER But there will be no justice, there will be no government of the people, by the people, and for the ... JOHN JAY HOOKER To say that one goes on holiday is to speak the language of the working class, for whom the time off... ROBERT ANTON WILSON There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the governme... J. D. VANCE An elite class that is free to operate without limits - whether limits imposed by the rule of law or... GLENN GREENWALD It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the t... LUDWIG VON MISES The most basic duty of government is to defend the lives of its own citizens. Any government that fa... DONALD TRUMP History proves that dictatorships do not grow out of strong and successful governments, but out of w... FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT The bottom line is there are lots of problems that were not created by government. The biggest one i... CHUCK SCHUMER Government is a true religion: it has its dogmas, its mysteries, its priests. To submit it to the in... JOSEPH DE MAISTRE I think the Government is trying to cover up its own negligence by blaming GPs and that is a disgrac... ANDREW LANSLEY The government is racking its brains to create jobs as it braces itself for a really tough year. GUO YUE We print money. The people that print the money is actually us. The government of the United States ... J. C. CHANDOR A government that operates under the guise of capitalism does not necessarily mean it is free of the... DEBORAH SIMPSON Though many of the poor have come to see the affluent middle class as its enemy, that class actually... CESAR CHAVEZ The Liberals, apparently, want to prorogue the House. They want to run out of town, get out of town ... STEPHEN HARPER As long as government has the power to regulate business, business will control government by fundin... MARY J. RUWART We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY Why is this government so insensitive to the concerns of the middle-class people? GILLES DUCEPPE It seems to us that one of the deepest divisions between the Russians and the Americans or British, ... JOHN STEINBECK But the first differentiation of its reflection in the manifested World is purely Spiritual, and the... HELENA BLAVATSKY left to the Kuwaiti government itself and its estimation about the situation in Iraq. HOSHYAR ZEBARI Progressives did not like the antiquated thinking that saw the Constitution as a barrier to governme... SHELDON RICHMAN It is important that the government has all its votes at its disposal this afternoon. The security o... GORDON BROWN By using its currency as an economic weapon and by pouring billions of dollars of illegal subsidies ... CASS JOHNSON It was an initiation into the love of learning, of learning how to learn . . . as a matter of interd... LEONARD BERNSTEIN The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a... THOMAS HUXLEY There was a limit to how much a government could reduce its spending, but a Labour government would ... JOSEPH MUSCAT The curtain is coming down on a feeble case presented by the government. In its rush to judgment, th... WILLIAM NEUKOM I think the success of democracy is not really police security; it's the presence of a broad mid... ABDULLAH II OF JORDAN Microsoft doesn't respect the antitrust laws, and it has amply demonstrated that it can't be trusted... RALPH NADER It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses o... JAMES MADISON They increasingly have the same aspirations and concerns as the middle class everywhere. The environ... ANDY ROTHMAN Each planet has its own sun. … [I]t really is another sun on Uranus … The relation of the Sun to... LUDWIG FEUERBACH I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held t... THOMAS JEFFERSON A Government that encourages its citizens to find livelihood abroad is not worth its salt. MUHAMMED HAIDER Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always to... H.L. MENCKEN We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, rec... FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT Congress must assert its proper role and seek the truth. A government that fails to honor its own la... CAROLINE FREDRICKSON The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the rulin... KARL MARX The art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of the citizens to... VOLTAIRE I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by it's system of cred... WOODROW T. WILSON The ugliest government is the one which is spreading fear to its own people! The finest government i... MEHMET MURAT ILDAN That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until no... ABRAHAM LINCOLN When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling th... JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of cit... VOLTAIRE believe that our government has an obligation to take care of its people. CHARLIE RANGEL Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privileg... GUNTHER GRASS Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privileg... GUNTER GRASS War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support... JAMES MADISON I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be h... THOMAS JEFFERSON A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or off... WALTER BAGEHOT A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whateve... JOSEPH STORY Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future... W.H. AUDEN Liberal Democrats in government will not follow the last Labour government by sounding the retreat o... NICK CLEGG It is a seldom proferred argument as to the advantages of a free press that it has a major function ... WALTER CRONKITE For that matter, is the Saudi government doing as much as it can to stop its young men from trooping... BILL KRISTOL There is a close analogy between organic chemistry in its relation to biochemistry and pure mathemat... ROBERT ROBINSON A middle class is so important to a society that its value cannot be overestimated. ELIOT ENGEL We must judge of a form of government by its general tendency, not by happy accidents. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognize... ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognise... ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON We need to understand that we are not each others' enemies in this country. And it is only the p... BEN CARSON A government is upright if its throne is established by righteousness SUNDAY ADELAJA It is not systematic education which somehow molds society, but, on the contrary, society which, acc... PAULO FREIRE
More Lionel Trilling
Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood. LIONEL TRILLING Educating a son I should allow him no fairy tales and only a very few novels. This is to prevent him... LIONEL TRILLING Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more th... LIONEL TRILLING Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious eve... LIONEL TRILLING The immature artist imitates. The mature artist steals. LIONEL TRILLING Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal. LIONEL TRILLING We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of b... LIONEL TRILLING Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary inte... LIONEL TRILLING The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularit... LIONEL TRILLING Literature is the human activity that make the fullest and most precise account of variousness, poss... LIONEL TRILLING Reasons for not keeping a notebook: 1) the ambiguity of the reader LIONEL TRILLING We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Ut... LIONEL TRILLING Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecuti... LIONEL TRILLING In the American metaphysic, reality is always material reality, hard, resistant, unformed, impenetra... LIONEL TRILLING It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief. LIONEL TRILLING A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture ... LIONEL TRILLING The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather. LIONEL TRILLING It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reitera... LIONEL TRILLING The poet... may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather. LIONEL TRILLING Educating a son I should allow him no fairy tales and only a very few novels. This is to prevent him... LIONEL TRILLING We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of b... LIONEL TRILLING The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather LIONEL TRILLING Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary inte... LIONEL TRILLING Youth is a time when we find the books we give up but do not get over. LIONEL TRILLING The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is posse... LIONEL TRILLING Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect... LIONEL TRILLING The immature artist imitates. Mature artists steal. LIONEL TRILLING Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood LIONEL TRILLING Literature is the human activity that takes the fullest and most precise account of variousness, pos... LIONEL TRILLING consistent affection for his characters is what sets Tolstoy apart. Flaubert is equally “objective... LIONEL TRILLING It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief LIONEL TRILLING This is the great vice of academicism, that it is concerned with ideas rather than with thinking. LIONEL TRILLING We are all ill: but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health. LIONEL TRILLING There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the ... LIONEL TRILLING What marks the artist is his power to shape the material of pain we all have. LIONEL TRILLING My mother enjoyed old age, and because of her I've begun to enjoy parts of it too. So far I'... LIONEL BLUE There are more important things in life than winning or losing a game. LIONEL MESSI In football as in watchmaking, talent and elegance mean nothing without rigour and precision. LIONEL MESSI Pious XII was too neutral to mention the gas chambers; decent people like my own family were turned ... LIONEL BLUE Old friends die on you, and they're irreplaceable. You become dependent. LIONEL BLUE Being named among the best at something is special and beautiful. But if there are no titles, nothin... LIONEL MESSI I'm lucky to be part of a team who help to make me look good, and they deserve as much of the cr... LIONEL MESSI I am pleased now that I have lived in a gay as well as a religious ghetto, though it hasn't been... LIONEL BLUE Good things come, and I'm not just referring to riding the buses. LIONEL BLUE I was certainly open for something being on the edge of a nervous breakdown, perplexed by my own sex... LIONEL BLUE One should be just as careful about lying as about telling the truth. LIONEL STRACHEY A brilliant epigram is a solemn platitude gone to a masquerade ball. LIONEL STRACHEY A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed re... LIONEL SHRIVER I suppose that's a common conceit, that you've already been so damaged that damage itself, in its to... LIONEL SHRIVER In hindsight, Watergate was a curse as well as a blessing for American journalism. The courageous re... LIONEL BARBER You have to fight to reach your dream. You have to sacrifice and work hard for it. LIONEL MESSI The day you think there is no improvements to be made is a sad one for any player. LIONEL MESSI Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind. LIONEL HAMPTON Today I am the happiest man in the world, my son was born and thanks to God for this gift. LIONEL MESSI Whether it's a friendly match, or for points, or a final, or any game - I play the same. I'm... LIONEL MESSI The post-war American newsroom resembled a vast factory churning out multiple editions through the n... LIONEL BARBER Music was our wife, and we loved her. And we stayed with her, and we clothed her, and we put diamond... LIONEL HAMPTON I find the greatest songs in the world come out of pain, and I don't like it! Here's what it... LIONEL RICHIE Our U.S. audience is composed of globally-minded Americans, an elite category, the ones who do have ... LIONEL BARBER I would like to see capital punishment suppressed in all democracies. LIONEL JOSPIN It's not so easy for us when we play teams who have a different mindset, like Chelsea or Inter M... LIONEL MESSI You cannot beat the feeling of sitting on top of the charts. I had almost forgotten what it feels li... LIONEL RICHIE They were determined to find something mechanically wrong with him - because broken machines are eas... LIONEL SHRIVER I had the pleasure of seeing a real goddess today. She was her own definition of beauty. She was mag... LIONEL SUGGS I thought at the time that I couldn't be horrified anymore, or wounded. I suppose that's a common co... LIONEL SHRIVER My mother was a modern woman with a limited interest in religion. When the sun set and the fast of t... LIONEL BLUE There's nothing more satisfying than seeing a happy and smiling child. I always help in any way ... LIONEL MESSI I repeat what I always say: I want the best for Argentina in every way. I never try to make trouble ... LIONEL MESSI I always thought I wanted to play professionally, and I always knew that to do that I'd have to ... LIONEL MESSI My guess is the great majority of teachers would welcome a system where innovation is embraced, wher... LIONEL SOSA Be proud of your Latino culture and do the best work you can do, and you will always succeed. LIONEL SOSA I want to concentrate on winning things with Barcelona and Argentina. Then if people want to say nic... LIONEL MESSI The truth is my idea has been to always stay at Barcelona and see out the rest of my career here. Li... LIONEL MESSI I've never stopped being Argentine, and I've never wanted to. I feel very proud of being Arg... LIONEL MESSI I thought of such Christian inventions as the ghetto and the Jewish badge of shame. The Nazis didn... LIONEL BLUE For my part, I try to do my bit to make people's lives more bearable, in particular children acr... LIONEL MESSI Working with Benny was important for me and for black musicians in general. LIONEL HAMPTON Money is not a motivating factor. Money doesn't thrill me or make me play better because there a... LIONEL MESSI Christianity had two faces which bewildered me - two pictures which didn't fit. LIONEL BLUE I prefer to win titles with the team ahead of individual awards or scoring more goals than anyone el... LIONEL MESSI A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whet... LIONEL SHRIVER Isn't it funny how ignorance is the source of strength of so many? LIONEL SUGGS Kids will keep it real. If I've ever had in my life a great anchor, it's them. They get in y... LIONEL RICHIE As a cub reporter, I devoured books about journalism. LIONEL BARBER You have to show up in the World Cup, and in the World Cup anything can happen. LIONEL MESSI Peace is a flawed logic. They believe that communication and understanding will create peace. Howeve... LIONEL SUGGS I feel honored to have been a part of that dramatic change. LIONEL HAMPTON Seemed to me that drumming was the best way to get close to God. LIONEL HAMPTON You cannot allow your desire to be a winner to be diminished by achieving success before and I belie... LIONEL MESSI For some years I deserted religion in favour of Marxism. The republic of goodness seemed more attain... LIONEL BLUE My windows open to the autumn night, In vain I watched for sleep to visit me, How should sleep dul... LIONEL JOHNSON Madison's height took us out early in the game but we never quit. We continued to play our game. It ... LIONEL ANDERSON Kids walking to school are getting offered rides, players are getting let in line at the cafeteria, ... LIONEL ANDERSON We're all very much excited. We had a chance last year, but we got shot down before the Top 28. The ... LIONEL ANDERSON I've got just bits and pieces on Madison. But we've never worried about that before, you know, about... LIONEL ANDERSON This is our business. It is what we do. LIONEL ANDERSON The last two years it has been working for us. LIONEL ANDERSON Business is very good right now. LIONEL ANDERSON I thought we did a good job stopping their perimeter shooting. Overall, we did a good job defensivel... LIONEL ANDERSON We don't get rattled. We never get rattled. Coming into the game we knew that St. James was a good-s... LIONEL ANDERSON There were always plenty of newspapers in the house. 'The Times', 'Guardian', 'D... LIONEL BARBER I didn't want to be on the losing side. I was fed up with Jewish weakness, timidity and fear. I ... LIONEL BLUE Thanks to social media such as Facebook and Twitter, a far wider range of people take part in gather... LIONEL BARBER Lionel Richie, love song, OK, thank you very much, good-bye. And all of a sudden I realized that, in... LIONEL RICHIE It was admitted by the early rabbis that the sectarians could be as full of good works as eggs were ... LIONEL BLUE It's quite interesting that in my growing up I had several influences. We had gospel music on ca... LIONEL RICHIE I just like people. I'll hold a conversation at a gas station. It's not about the fame and t... LIONEL RICHIE Like I've said many times before, I'm always more likely to remember goals for their importa... LIONEL MESSI The truth is that I don't have a favourite goal. I remember important goals more than I do favou... LIONEL MESSI All artists are egotistical maniacs with inferiority complexes. LIONEL RICHIE At religious instruction classes, I encountered The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan, and the sincer... LIONEL BLUE Some of the parables of the Kingdom made wonderful sense, but the exclusivity in the New Testament p... LIONEL BLUE Anger does not solve problems - anger only makes things worse. I go by the old saying, 'Don'... LIONEL SOSA Yet if there's no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one? To answer one life wi... LIONEL SHRIVER The existence of other people is essentially awkward. LIONEL SHRIVER Okay, it's like this. You wake up, you watch TV, and you get in the car and you listen to the radio.... LIONEL SHRIVER I realize it's commonplace for parents to say to their child sternly, 'I love you, but I don't alway... LIONEL SHRIVER The discovery that heartbreak is indeed heartbreaking consoles us about our humanity. LIONEL SHRIVER I didn't care about anything. And there's a freedom in apathy, a wild, dizzying liberation on which ... LIONEL SHRIVER Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life. LIONEL SHRIVER In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainl... LIONEL SHRIVER ...You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have... LIONEL SHRIVER Still, I may have been glad to scratch the dry surface of our day-to-day peaceableness the way Viole... LIONEL SHRIVER I'm motivated. The spirit hits me and I just keep going and don't stop. The more I play, the more I ... LIONEL HAMPTON [Jazz] went from the classics to ragtime to Dixieland to swing to bebop to cool jazz, . . . But it's... LIONEL HAMPTON For a Christian, Jesus is the unique and only way that God has fully revealed himself. For a Jew thi... LIONEL BLUE My father was a journalist for 50 years in Leeds and Fleet Street. I thought about a career in busin... LIONEL BARBER We will not take Arsenal lightly for one minute, as they showed in the two matches against us last s... LIONEL MESSI Early on I saw the repression and idolatry of Stalinism, and when it cracked, I was open to religion... LIONEL BLUE We must lead in a different way... We must have an active president, who gives strong direction and ... LIONEL JOSPIN I am not the Prime Minister of French capitalism. I am the Prime Minister of France. LIONEL JOSPIN Inhuman and barbaric acts were carried out by both sides, even if each side tended for too long to d... LIONEL JOSPIN an exceptional woman ... who brilliantly gave Russian women a new image. LIONEL JOSPIN We must lead in a different way, ... We must have an active president, who gives strong direction an... LIONEL JOSPIN No senior official -- neither the interior minister, nor the defense or justice ministers, nor the p... LIONEL JOSPIN I wondered why people ever tried to accomplish anything when attainment of every sort was inbuilt wi... LIONEL SHRIVER Why would you want to sell millions of people on the illusion that they knew you, when they didn't? LIONEL SHRIVER Country is bringing in a little rock element... a little '80s element. Melody is king now. But i... LIONEL RICHIE In the summer of 2009, I modestly predicted that most major news organisations would be charging for... LIONEL BARBER The best compliment that has ever been given to me was, I was at the airport one day and a guy came ... LIONEL RICHIE Because of my Marxism, I was not into myths or miracles, whether it was the virgin birth, the physic... LIONEL BLUE For the BBC and others, a free website is an obvious and relatively cheap addendum to their main pur... LIONEL BARBER The secular world is more spiritual than it thinks, just as the ecclesiastical world is more materia... LIONEL BLUE You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of... LIONEL SHRIVER The secret is keeping busy, and loving what you do. LIONEL HAMPTON We talk about what's important to Hispanics: education, family, creating an environment in which... LIONEL SOSA Half the people in Hollywood are dying to be discovered and the other half are afraid they will be. LIONEL BARRYMORE Hollywood is tied hand and foot to the demands for artificiality of the masses all over the world. LIONEL BARRYMORE I've got a lot of ham in me. LIONEL BARRYMORE Nah, I've always had a great relationship with my two brothers, I have always had their support ... LIONEL MESSI I believe that we are missing a great opportunity. We as Republicans are not really emphasizing what... LIONEL SOSA I've always been crazy about playing. LIONEL HAMPTON That was a big deal at the time, because no blacks were integrated with whites in anything - not in ... LIONEL HAMPTON Playing is my way of thinking, talking, communicating. LIONEL HAMPTON Children are a great comfort in your old age - and they help you reach it faster, too. LIONEL KAUFFMAN Chicago was jazzy, man, jazzy - they had all the great jazz men. LIONEL HAMPTON This is the age of insincerity. The movies had the misfortune to come along in the twentieth century... LIONEL BARRYMORE I have noted that persons with bad judgment are most insistent that we do what they think best. LIONEL ABEL To my mind there is nothing so beautiful or so provocative as a secondhand book store...To me it is ... LIONEL BARRYMORE But indifference would ultimately commend itself as a devastating weapon. LIONEL SHRIVER Omnipotence is a status that is fragile at best. By its very own standard meaning of unlimited power... LIONEL SUGGS He looks uncomfortable, and in this respect the garb is apt. Kevin is uncomfortable; the tiny clothi... LIONEL SHRIVER People won't see Imagination in something that doesn't relate to their experience because of their o... LIONEL SUGGS Are you chuckling yet? Because then along came you. A big, broad meat eater with brash blond hair an... LIONEL SHRIVER People need to stop accepting the evidence of reality, and start questioning it. LIONEL SUGGS Beware of what "everybody says". LIONEL SHRIVER To my surprise, my 70s are nicer than my 60s and my 60s than my 50s, and I wouldn't wish my teen... LIONEL BLUE I find the concept of Hell to be more honest than that of everyday life. In Hell, no one can lie to ... LIONEL SUGGS Discomfort begets discomfort in others. LIONEL SHRIVER Intellectuals that approach me, only serve to feeding my intellectualism. Imaginists that approach m... LIONEL SUGGS Sure...the boy was precocious. But having been precocious himself, Lowell was never wowed by teenage... LIONEL SHRIVER His weight makes him a social pariah. It reduces the likelihood he’ll remarry. It has grave implic... LIONEL SHRIVER Funny how the nature of a normal day is the first memory to fade. LIONEL SHRIVER I can remember when nobody believed an actor and didn't care what he believed. LIONEL BARRYMORE That boy hardly needed a mask when his naked face was already impenetrable. LIONEL SHRIVER People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment. LIONEL SHRIVER On a personal note, I think it won't be until after I've retired that I'm fully aware of... LIONEL MESSI I've been a Republican all my life because I embrace the conservative values of hard work, perso... LIONEL SOSA When comparing 100 years of experience to 1, there is a way to close the gap. One must simply unders... LIONEL SUGGS Experience teaches is such a lovely saying. However, when people try not to make the mistakes of wha... LIONEL SUGGS Wisdom isn't built on experience; it's built on reason... LIONEL SUGGS I grew up with the Grand Ole Opry, Dottie West, Conway Twitty, Buck Owens... not realizing it was in... LIONEL RICHIE My earliest memories of country music are the Grand Ole Opry. LIONEL RICHIE The secrets of the universe aren't really secrets. It's just that humanity is too subjugated by thei... LIONEL SUGGS I feel that the Christian experience and the Jewish one have much to give each other. If this open s... LIONEL BLUE Praying privately in churches, I began to discover that heaven was my true home and also that it was... LIONEL BLUE I literally fell among Quakers when I went up to Oxford. LIONEL BLUE To make a statement that one knows is false is more honest than to make a statement that one knows i... LIONEL SUGGS When you value someone, it merely shows that you truly have no idea about the person that they aren'... LIONEL SUGGS People lie to adapt... LIONEL SUGGS I create lies for people in order for them to find something true about themselves. I teach people t... LIONEL SUGGS Still, through a complex combination of optimism and longing and bravado, you would round it up. Whi... LIONEL SHRIVER What would I have done if I'd been put to the test? Would I have risked my own life for people I... LIONEL BLUE I still go to a Christian priory for retreats. LIONEL BLUE The real evidence is not practically speaking in scholarship but in how Jesus and the Christianity b... LIONEL BLUE If your enemy has the power to see into the future, make sure you are the author of that future. LIONEL SUGGS When God plays chess, you will notice that he never has to move a single piece...in order to win. LIONEL SUGGS To withdraw isn't a sign of weakness... It is a sign that a man knows the limits of his capabilities... LIONEL SUGGS If you drop assumptions, and can anticipate the possibilities, you can master the art of strategy. H... LIONEL SUGGS Strategy is methodical, but the one who steers chaos and randomness can steer God. LIONEL SUGGS