Raymond Williams

Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) 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)

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• To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.