Terry Eagleton Quotes

Quotes about:

• After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.

  Terry Eagleton

  Literary Theory, Apathy, Inevitable

  "Why Marx Was Right". Book by Terry Eagleton, 2011.

  53 Copy quote

• There seems to be something in humanity which will not bow meekly to the insolence of power.

  Terry Eagleton

  Humanity, Bows, Insolence

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Why Marx Was Right”, p.100, Yale University Press

  4 Copy quote

• Genuine equality means not treating everyone the same, but attending equally to everyone’s different needs.

  Terry Eagleton

  Mean, Different, Needs

  28 Copy quote

• Works of art cannot save us. They can simply render us more sensitive to what needs to be repaired.

  Terry Eagleton

  Art, Needs, Sensitive

  7 Copy quote

• The role of the intellectual, so it is said, is to speak truth to power. Noam Chomsky has dismissed this pious tag on two grounds. For one thing, power knows the truth already; it is just busy trying to conceal it. For another, it is not those in power who need the truth, but those they oppress.

  Terry Eagleton

  Two, Intellectual, Trying

  24 Copy quote

• Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.

  Terry Eagleton

  Book, Ideas, Bird

  "This milquetoast consensus is unnerved by radical faith" by Tristram Hunt, www.theguardian.com. September 11, 2007.

  43 Copy quote

• Capitalism will behave antisocially if it is profitable for it to do so, and that can now mean human devastation on an unimaginable scale. What used to be apocalyptic fantasy is today no more than sober realism.

  Terry Eagleton

  Mean, Devastation, Today

  "Why Marx Was Right". Book by Terry Eagleton, 2011.

  5 Copy quote

• If we were not called upon to work in order to survive, we might simply lie around all day doing nothing.

  Terry Eagleton

  Lying, Order, Might

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.131, John Wiley & Sons

  4 Copy quote

• Literary texts do not exist on bookshelves: they are processes of signification materialized only in the practice of reading. For literature to happen, the reader is quite as vital as the author.

  Terry Eagleton

  Reading, Practice, Literature

  "Literary Theory: An Introduction". Book by Terry Eagleton, 1983.

  4 Copy quote

• Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely thrust into the political unconscious can sovereignty feel secure.

  Terry Eagleton

  Political, Occupation, Invasion

  31 Copy quote

• A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.

  Terry Eagleton

  People, Toil, Astonishment

  Terry Eagleton (1991). “Ideology: An Introduction”, p.82, Verso

  27 Copy quote

• The German philosopher Walter Benjamin had the curious notion that we could change the past. For most of us, the past is fixed while the future is open.

  Terry Eagleton

  Past, Philosopher, Curious

  6 Copy quote

• Deconstruction insists not that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.

  Terry Eagleton

  Truth Is, Deconstruction, Illusory

  "Frère Jacques: The Politics of Deconstruction". Book by Terry Eagleton, 1984.

  93 Copy quote

• Modern capitalist nations are the fruit of a history of slavery, genocide, violence and exploitation every bit as abhorrent as Mao's China or Stalin's Soviet Union.

  Terry Eagleton

  Abhorrent, Slavery, Unions

  "Why Marx Was Right". Book by Terry Eagleton, 2011.

  17 Copy quote

• Socialism is the completion of democracy, not the negation of it.

  Terry Eagleton

  Democracy, Socialism, Negation

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Why Marx Was Right”, p.202, Yale University Press

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• [F]or the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham. The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks. Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey.

  Terry Eagleton

  Soccer, Football, Games

  36 Copy quote

• The past can be used to renew the present, not just to bury it.

  Terry Eagleton

  Past, Used

  "Conquering history" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. February 3, 2006.

  8 Copy quote

• All desire springs from a lack, which it strives continually to fill.

  Terry Eagleton

  Spring, Desire, Strive

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.145, John Wiley & Sons

  11 Copy quote

• Language, identity and forms of life are the terms in which political demands are shaped and voiced.

  Terry Eagleton

  Political, Identity, Demand

  "Culture conundrum" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. May 20, 2008.

  7 Copy quote

• If it is true that we need a degree of certainty to get by, it is also true that too much of the stuff can be lethal.

  Terry Eagleton

  Degrees, Needs, Stuff

  Terry Eagleton (2007). “The Meaning of Life”, p.62, Oxford University Press

  9 Copy quote

• The liberal state is neutral between capitalism and its critics until the critics look like they are winning.

  Terry Eagleton

  Winning, Looks, States

  "Why Marx Was Right". Book by Terry Eagleton, 2011.

  12 Copy quote

• Universities are no longer educational in any sense of the word that Rousseau would have recognised. Instead, they have become unabashed instruments of capital. Confronted with this squalid betrayal, one imagines he would have felt sick and oppressed.

  Terry Eagleton

  Betrayal, Educational, Sick

  "What would Rousseau make of our selfish age?" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. June 27, 2012.

  8 Copy quote

• Christian faith, as I understand it, is not primarily a matter of signing on for the proposition that there exists a Supreme Being, but the kind of commitment made manifest by a human being at the end of his tether, foundering in darkness, pain, and bewilderment, who nevertheless remains faithful to the promise of a transformative love.

  Terry Eagleton

  Christian, Pain, Commitment

  4 Copy quote

• You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism.

  Terry Eagleton

  Literary Theory, Talking, People

  "Why Marx Was Right". Book by Terry Eagleton, 2011.

  8 Copy quote

• People do evil things because they are evil. Some people are evil in the way that some things are coloured indigo. They commit their evil deeds not to achieve some goal, but just because of the sort of people they are.

  Terry Eagleton

  People, Evil, Goal

  Terry Eagleton (2010). “On Evil”, p.4, Yale University Press

  14 Copy quote

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