Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.
Lionel TrillingRead
Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights society's tendency to value criticism over understanding.
Lionel Trilling's quote critiques the cultural phenomenon where people are often lauded for their ability to blame others, seeing this as a sign of intelligence and moral standing. This mindset can cultivate a culture of fault-finding, where understanding and empathy are overshadowed by the desire to assign blame, suggesting that society may need to reconsider what it truly values in behavior and intellect.
Themes
BlamingCultureVirtueIntellectCriticism
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about social accountability, one might say, 'As Lionel Trilling pointed out, our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming.'
More from Lionel Trilling
All quotes →The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather.
Lionel TrillingRead
Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all to the end that someone else should not perform the same process.
Lionel TrillingRead
Youth is a time when we find the books we give up but do not get over.
Lionel TrillingRead
There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination.
Lionel TrillingRead
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 TrillingRead
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