Lillian Hellman: Quotes about people
Lillian Hellman was American dramatist and screenwriter. Explore interesting quotes on people.
Source: Scoundrel Time (1976), p. 82
Context: To many intellectuals the radicals had become the chief, perhaps the only, enemy. … Not alone because the radical's reasons were suspect but because his convictions would lead to a world that deprived the rest of us of what we had. Very few people were capable of admitting anything so simple. But the antiradical camp contained the same divisions: often they were honest and thoughtful men, often they were men who turned down a dark road for dark reasons.
But radicalism or anti-radicalism should have had nothing to do with the sly, miserable methods of McCarthy, Nixon and colleagues, as they flailed at Communists, near-Communists, and nowhere-near Communists. Lives were being ruined and few hands were raised in help. Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?
The Little Foxes (1939)
Context: There are people who eat earth and eat all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. Then there are people who stand around and watch them eat it. (Softly) Sometimes I think it ain't right to stand and watch them do it.
“I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.”
As quoted in Untamed Tongues : Wild Words from Wild Women (1993) by Autumn Stephens, p. 132
“Lonely people, in talking to each other can make each other lonelier.”
The Autumn Garden (1951)
Letter to HUAC (19 May 1952)
Source: Scoundrel Time (1976), p. 150