Banality Quotes

• Banality is a symptom of non-communication. Men hide behind their cliches.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Communication, Men, Cliche

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• Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it.

  Christopher Lasch

  Order, Overcoming, Today

  Christopher Lasch (1991). “The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations”, p.11, W. W. Norton & Company

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• We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these twin specters.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Writing, Destiny

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• Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Media, Television, Spheres

  Times Literary Supplement 10 June 1960

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• Dawn was written well before 9/11. People speak a lot today about the banality of evil, but not all evil is banal. Some of it is carefully structured and well-thought-out. That's where the real danger lies.

  Alan Dean Foster

  Lying, Real, People

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• It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never “radical,” that it is only extreme, and that it possess neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like fungus on the surface. It is “thought-defying,” as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its “banality.” Only the good has depth and can be radical.

  Hannah Arendt

  Roots, Evil, Frustrated

  Hannah Arendt (2000). “The Portable Hannah Arendt”, Penguin Group USA

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  There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.

  Anton Chekhov

  Being Yourself, Depressing, Insulting

  "The Teacher of Literature". Short story by Anton Chekhov, 1894.

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• [About Eichmann:] It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us - the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.

  Hannah Arendt

  Taught Us, Long, Evil

  Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil ch. 15 (1963)

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• There arose a belief in style - and in banality. Banality encompassed politics, too, because it was a common belief that politics were not worthy of art.

  Douglas Sirk

  Art, Style, Belief

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• As we have come to understand the psychology of evil, we have realized that such transformations of human character are not as rare as we would like to believe. Historical inquiry and behavioral science have demonstrated the "banality of evil" -- that is, under certain conditions and social pressures, ordinary people can commit acts that would otherwise be unthinkable.

  Philip Zimbardo

  Believe, Character, Evil

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• u201Che G-minor Symphony consists of eight remarkable measures surrounded by a half-hour of banality.

  Glenn Gould

  Symphony, Eight, Half

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• The most conspicuous thing about suffering is, as W.H. Auden once observed, its banality. The day is green, the sun is shinging, someone is eating, or opening a window, the torturer's horse is scatching its innocent behind on a tree, and in a mere second someone we love is dead.

  Michael Jackson

  Horse, Love Is, Tree

  Michael Jackson (2004). “In Sierra Leone”, p.140, Duke University Press

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• The passion for art is, as for believers, very religious. It unites people, its message is of common humanity. Art has become my religion - others pray in church. It's a banality, but you don't possess art, it possesses you. It's like falling in love.

  Francois Pinault

  Religious, Falling In Love, Art

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• Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.

  Hannah Arendt

  Reality, Expression, Adherence

  Hannah Arendt (1981). “The Life of the Mind”, p.20, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning, it satisfies the senses amazingly.

  Virginia Woolf

  Philosophy, Medicine, Skins

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1291, Delphi Classics

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• Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.

  T. S. Eliot

  Appreciation, Editors, Criticism

  "Selected Essays".

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• Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

  Samuel Butler

  Men, Corny, Supreme

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4298, Delphi Classics

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• A mental disease has swept the planet: banalization presented with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal unit.

  Ivan Chtcheglov

  Country, Garbage Disposal, People

  Guy Debord, Ivan Chtcheglov, Asger Jorn, Raoul Vaneigem, Mustapha Khayati (2014). “Situationism: A Compendium”, p.8, Bread and Circuses Publishing

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• Remind me again what's wrong with Dave Matthews?" "Basically everything, except technical proficiency," Walter said. "Right." "But maybe especially the banality of the lyrics. 'Gotta be free, so free, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can't live without my freedom, yeah yeah.' That's pretty much every song.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Song, Dave, Yeah

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Freedom: A Novel”, p.145, Macmillan

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• My whole being was seeking for something still unknown which might confer meaning upon the banality of life.

  Carl Jung

  Might, Stills, Whole

  Carl Gustav Jung (1973). “Memories, dreams, reflections”, Random House Inc

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• Great minds tend toward banality. It is the noblest effort of individualism. But it implies a sort of modesty, which is so rare that it is scarcely found except in the greatest, or in beggars.

  Andre Gide

  Effort, Mind, Genius

  Andre Gide (2017). “Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality”, p.280, Routledge

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• Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest.

  John Taylor Gatto

  Education, Teacher, Reading

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• It seems to me you do not care what banality a man expresses so long as he expresses it in Irish.

  James Joyce

  Men, Long, Care

  James Joyce (1963). “Stephen Hero”, p.54, New Directions Publishing

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• 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.

  Perry Anderson

  Simple, Ideas, Quality

  Perry Anderson (2005). “Spectrum”, p.76, Verso

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• My heart beats more for a raw, average vulgar art, which doesn't live between sleepy fairy-tale moods and poetry but rather concedes a direct entrance to the fearful, commonplace, splendid and the average grotesque banality in life.

  Max Beckmann

  Art, Average, Fairy Tale

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