{"quotes":[{"text":"Intellectuals are judged not by their morals, but by the quality of their ideas, which are rarely reducible to simple verdicts of truth or falsity, if only because banalities are by definition accurate.","author":"Perry Anderson","tags":["accuracy","banality","falsity","ideas","intellectuals","morals","truth"],"id":23005,"author_id":"Perry+Anderson"},{"text":"Evil that arises out of ordinary thinking and is committed by ordinary people is the norm, not the exception.","author":"Ervin Staub","tags":["banality","evil"],"id":25870,"author_id":"Ervin+Staub"},{"text":"He was looking for the Knight of Faith, the real prodigy. That real prodigy, having set its relations with the infinite, was entirely at home in the finite. Able to carry the jewel of faith, making the motions of the infinite, and as a result needing nothing but the finite and the usual. Whereas others sought the extraordinary in the world. Or wished to be what was gaped at.","author":"Saul Bellow","tags":["banality","extraordinary","faith","infinity","life"],"id":57112,"author_id":"Saul+Bellow"},{"text":"Perfection is, after all, a form of banality.","author":"Elisa Braden","tags":["banality","perfection"],"id":69408,"author_id":"Elisa+Braden"},{"text":"It is the sheer ugliness and banality of everyday life which turns my blood to ice and makes me cringe in terror.","author":"Jean Lorrain","tags":["banality","horror","life","reality","terror","ugly"],"id":101865,"author_id":"Jean+Lorrain"},{"text":"The real troubles with living is that living is so banal.","author":"James Baldwin","tags":["banality","life","living"],"id":209424,"author_id":"James+Baldwin"},{"text":"So always avoid banality. That is, avoid illustrating the author's words and remarks. If you want to create a true masterpiece you must always avoid beautiful lies: the truths on the calender under each date you find a proverb or saying such as: 'He who is good to others will be happy.' But this is not true. It is a lie. The spectator, perhaps, is content. The spectator likes easy truths. But we are not there to please or pander to the spectator. We are here to tell the truth.","author":"Jerzy Grotowski","tags":["awareness","banality","lies","plays","theater","theatre","truth"],"id":215936,"author_id":"Jerzy+Grotowski"},{"text":"Creativity is contagious. And so is banality. Criticism is an art in itself. Don’t let the dullness around destroy the creativity within. T.S. Eliot said, “honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.” Good to remember….","author":"Elif Shafak","tags":["banality","creativity"],"id":280934,"author_id":"Elif+Shafak"},{"text":"In terms of 'quiet' bourgeois democracy two fundamental possibilities are open to the industrial worker: identification with the bourgeoisie, which holds a higher position in the social scale, or identification with his own social class, which produces its own anti-reactionary way of life. To pursue the first possibility means to envy the reactionary man, to imitate him, and, if the opportunity arises, to assimilate his habits of life. To pursue the second of these possibilities means to reject the reactionary man's ideologies and habits of life. Due to the simultaneous influence exercised by both social and class habits, these two possibilities are equally strong. The revolutionary movement also failed to appreciate the importance of the seemingly irrelevant everyday habits, indeed, very often turned them to bad account. The lower middle-class bedroom suite, which the 'rabble' buys as soon as he has the means, even if he is otherwise revolutionary minded; the consequent suppression of the wife, even if he is a Communist; the 'decent' suit of clothes for Sunday; 'proper' dance steps and a thousand other 'banalities,' have an incomparably greater reactionary influence when repeated day after day than thousands of revolutionary rallies and leaflets can ever hope to counterbalance. Narrow conservative life exercises a continuous influence, penetrates every facet of everyday life; whereas factory work and revolutionary leaflets have only a brief effect.","author":"Wilhelm Reich","tags":["1969","itarian-family","itarian-ideology","banality","bourgeois-indulgence","class-struggle","domestication","lower-middle-class","materialism","political-influence","propaganda","reactionary-politics"],"id":329687,"author_id":"Wilhelm+Reich"},{"text":"At Dachau. We had a wonderful pool for the garrison children. It was even heated. But that was before we were transferred. Dachau was ever so much nicer than Auschwitz. But then, it was in the Reich. See my trophies there. The one in the middle, the big one. That was presented to me by the Reich Youth Leader himself, Baldur von Schirach. Let me show you my scrapbook.","author":"William Styron","tags":["auschwitz","banality","dachau","evil","hate","holocaust","swimming","third-reich"],"id":364769,"author_id":"William+Styron"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":13,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}