“It is an intolerable irony that societies that are anything but socialist should thus define what socialism is in the eyes of so many. It is an irony that has to be undone.”

— Michael Harrington

Source: Socialism: Past and Future (1989), p.67

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Michael Harrington 17

American political writer 1928–1989

John Leonard (1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator

This Pen For Hire (Doubleday, 1973, ISBN 0-385-03923-9), p. 6
Not Enough Blood, Not Enough Gore, The New York Times, 7 July 1970 http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/01/home/vidal-sisters.html

“And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U. S. irony is based on an implicit "I don’t really mean what I’m saying." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean."”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction
Essays

“The irony is that so many countries are competing in arms races, they don't even care how many people have been and will be victims.”

Titon Rahmawan

“A mouth of no distinction but well practiced, before I entered my teens, in irony. For what is irony but the repository of hurt? And what is hurt but the repository of hope?”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Source: Faithless: Tales of Transgression

“If the universe has any soul, it is the soul of irony.”

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 25 (p. 548)

“I came to art because I wanted to escape the other regulations of the society. The whole society is so political. But the irony is that my art becomes more and more political.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Wines, Michael. “China’s Impolitic Artist, Still Waiting to Be Silenced.” New York Times, November 28, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/world/asia/28weiwei.html?pagewanted=all
2000-09, 2009

“Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5
Context: Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here; guard yourself altogether from taking on their mental attitude! Where irony is not a direct and classic device of oratory, not for a moment equivocal to a healthy mind, it makes for depravity, it becomes a drawback to civilization, an unclean traffic with the forces of reaction, vice and materialism.