Lillian Hellman - Quodid

About

Picture of Lillian Hellman

Lillian Florence Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American playwright, prose writer, memoirist, and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway as well as her communist views and political activism. She was blacklisted after her appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) at the height of the anti-communist campaigns of 1947–1952. Although she continued to work on Broadway in the 1950s, her blacklisting by the U.S. film industry caused a drop in her income. Many praised Hellman for refusing to answer HUAC's questions, but others believed, despite her denial, that she had belonged to the Communist Party.

Quotes from Lillian Hellman

There are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it, like in the Bible with the locusts. And other people who stand around and watch them eat it.

—Lillian Hellman

action locusts watching

Things start out as hopes and end up as habits.

—Lillian Hellman

hope change habit

Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge's chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view.

—Lillian Hellman

justice opinion prejudice perspective

My mother was dead for five years before I knew that I had loved her very much.

—Lillian Hellman

People change and forget to tell each other.

—Lillian Hellman

relationships people change

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.

—Lillian Hellman

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.

—Lillian Hellman

God help all children as they move into a time of life they do not understand and must struggle through with precepts they have picked from the garbage cans of older people, clinging with the passion of the lost to odds and ends that will mess them up for all time, or hating the trash so much they will waste their future on the hatred.

—Lillian Hellman

The past with its pleasures, its rewards, its foolishness, it punishments, is there for each of us forever, and it should be.

—Lillian Hellman

Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did.

—Lillian Hellman