Raymond Williams Quotations

Raymond Henry Williams was a highly influential Welsh socialist academic, novelist and critic. He was Professor of Drama at the University of Cambridge (1974–1983).

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To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than dispair convincing. ~Raymond Williams

If from poetry we expect a succession of signals for the release of miscellaneous private emotion we are likely to find Tears, Idle Tears valuable.
- Reading and Criticism (1950)

We all like to think of ourselves as a standard, and I can see that it is genuinely difficult for the English middle class to suppose that the working class is not desperately anxious to become just like itself. I am afraid this must be unlearned.
- Culture and Society (1958)

Every aspect of personal life is radically affected by the quality of general life, and yet the general life is seen at its most important in completely personal terms.
- Realism and the Contemporary Novel (1961): The Long Revolution

The gap between our feelings and our social observation is dangerously wide.
- Realism and the Contemporary Novel (1961): The Long Revolution

Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.
- Keywords (1983)