“People who know what kind of new world they want to create through revolution are trouble enough; those who only know what they want to destroy are a curse.” — Mark Lilla Copy Share Image
“Democratic politics is about persuasion, not self-expression. I’m here, I’m queer will never provoke more than a pat on the head or a roll… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“The other component was to build cadres through political education. Republicans sought out wealthy donors to set up foundations and think tanks as safe… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“The romantic wants to create a world where he or she will possess a fully integrated, unconflicted identity—where the answers to the questions Who… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“How we react to the presidency of Donald Trump will be the first test of our preparedness. His administration in its infancy is already… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“The universities of our time instead cultivate students so obsessed with their personal identities and campus pseudo-politics that they have much less interest in,… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“The Republicans have successfully persuaded much of the public that they are the party of Joe Sixpack and Democrats are the party of Jessica… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“Mary McCarthy, though, had it wrong when she wrote that “Madame Bovary is Don Quixote in skirts.” Emma’s suffering is Platonic: she searches, in… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“You might have thought that, faced with a novel anti-political picture of the nation, liberals would have countered with an imaginative, hopeful vision of… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“The Stillborn God is not a fairy tale. It is a book about the fragility of our world, the world created by the intellectual… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“The forces at work in healthy party politics are centripetal; they encourage factions and interests to come together to work out common goals and… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“Martin Luther King Jr. was the greatest movement leader in American history. But, as Hillary Clinton once correctly pointed out, his efforts would have… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“Like any other political doctrine, liberalism makes assumptions about things human and divine, and these assumptions are, and ought to remain, open to disinterested… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“Better the self-torture of a godless Protestant conscience than the fantasies of a modern Prometheus.” — Mark Lilla Copy Share
“Identity is not the future of the left. It is not a force hostile to neoliberalism. Identity is Reaganism for lefties.” — Mark Lilla Copy Share
Whoever takes it upon himself to write an honest intellectual history of twentieth-century Europe will need a strong stomach. But he will need something… — Mark Lilla Copy Share
