Quote #17

Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.

More from Lillian Hellman

  1. If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. …
  2. It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour.
  3. I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.
  4. It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.
  5. Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.
  6. It is not good to see people who have been pretending strength all their lives lose it even for a minute.
  7. Decisions, particularly important ones, have always made me sleepy, perhaps because I know that I will have to make them by instinct, and t…
  8. It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip.

All Lillian Hellman quotes