Lionel Trilling - Sincerity and Authenticity (1971)

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Everything which the economist takes from you in the way of life and humanity, he restores to you in the form of money and wealth.

Lionel Trilling

The spectator, we might put it, contracts by infection the characteristic disease of the actor, the attenuation of selfhood that results from impersonation.

Lionel Trilling

Rousseau... is aesthetically revolted by the trashiness of what, some twenty years ago, David Riesman called the 'other-directed' personality, which he saw becoming ever-more salient in our society. This is the personality whose whole being is attuned to catch the signals sent out by the consensus of his fellows and by the institutional agencies of the culture, to the extent that he is scarcely a self at all, but, rather, a reiterated impersonation.

Lionel Trilling