Terry Eagleton Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Reading is not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair: our initial speculations generate a frame of reference within which to interpret what comes next, but what comes next may retrospectively transform our original understanding, highlighting some features of it and backgrounding others.

  Terry Eagleton

  Reading, Understanding, Movement

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.67, John Wiley & Sons

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• Reading a text is more like tracing this process of constant flickering than it is like counting the beads on a necklace.

  Terry Eagleton

  Reading, Necklaces, Process

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.111, John Wiley & Sons

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• Men and women do not easily submit to a power that does not weave itself into the texture of their daily existence - one reason why culture remains so politically vital. Civilisation cannot get on with culture, and it cannot get on without it.

  Terry Eagleton

  Men, Doe, Culture

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

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• Postmodernism is among other things a sick joke at the expense of... revolutionary avant-gardism.

  Terry Eagleton

  Sick, Revolutionary, Modernism

  "Capitalism, Modernism, and Postmodernism". Essay by Terry Eagleton, 1985.

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• Understanding is always in some sense retrospective, which is what Hegel meant by remarking that the owl of Minerva flies only at night.

  Terry Eagleton

  Night, Understanding, Owl

  Terry Eagleton (2008). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.190, U of Minnesota Press

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• A truly common culture is not one in which we all think alike, or in which we all believe that fairness is next to godliness, but one in which everyone is allowed to be in on the project of cooperatively shaping a common way of life.

  Terry Eagleton

  Believe, Thinking, Culture

  "Those in power are right to see multiculturalism as a threat" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2007.

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• Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur Thou still unravished bride of quietness, then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary.

  Terry Eagleton

  Book, Bus Stops, Everyday

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.2, John Wiley & Sons

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• From the viewpoint of political power, culture is absolutely vital. So vital, indeed, that power cannot operate without it. It is culture, in the sense of the everyday habits and beliefs of a people, which beds power down, makes it appear natural and inevitable, turns it into spontaneous reflex and response.

  Terry Eagleton

  People, Political, Everyday

  "Those in power are right to see multiculturalism as a threat" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2007.

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• Capitalism is the sorcerer's apprentice: it has summoned up powers which have spun wildly out of control and now threaten to destroy us.The task of socialism is not to spur on those powers but to bring them under rational human control.

  Terry Eagleton

  Spurs, Tasks, Socialism

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

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• Being brought up in a culture is a matter of learning appropriate forms of feeling as much as particular ways of thinking.

  Terry Eagleton

  Thinking, Feelings, Culture

  Terry Eagleton (2007). “How to Read a Poem”, p.106, John Wiley & Sons

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• The Kantian imperative to have the courage to think for oneself has involved a contemptuous disregard for the resources of tradition and an infantile view of authority as inherently oppressive.

  Terry Eagleton

  Thinking, Views, Tradition

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• The truth is that liberal humanism is at once largely ineffectual, and the best ideology of the 'human' that present bourgeois society can muster.

  Terry Eagleton

  Truth Is, Ideology, Humans

  Terry Eagleton (2008). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.174, U of Minnesota Press

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• We live in a society which on the one hand pressurizes us into the pursuit of instant gratification, and the other hand imposes on whole sectors of the population and endless deferment of fulfillment.

  Terry Eagleton

  Hands, Population, Pursuit

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.167, John Wiley & Sons

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• Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that.

  Terry Eagleton

  Christian, Children, Believe

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• The study of history and philosophy, accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for lawyers and engineers as well as for those who study in arts faculties.

  Terry Eagleton

  Art, Philosophy, Literature

  "The death of universities" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. December 17, 2010.

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• It is silly to call fat people "gravitationally challenged", a self-righteous fetishism of language which is no more than a symptom of political frustration.

  Terry Eagleton

  Silly, Frustration, Self

  The Guardian, October 27, 1992.

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• Capitalism cannot survive without a working class, while the working class can flourish a lot more freely without capitalism.

  Terry Eagleton

  Class, Working Class, Capitalism

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

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• The New Testament is a brutal destroyer of human illusions. If you follow Jesus and don't end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do. The stark signifier of the human condition is one who spoke up for love and justice and was done to death for his pains. The traumatic truth of human history is a mutilated body.

  Terry Eagleton

  Jesus, Pain, Justice

  Terry Eagleton (2014). “Reason, Faith, & Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate”, p.27, Yale University Press

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• In the deep night of metaphysics, all cats look black.

  Terry Eagleton

  Cat, Night, Black

  Terry Eagleton (1981). “Walter Benjamin, Or, Towards a Revolutionary Criticism”, New Left Books

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• If history moves forward, knowledge of it travels backwards, so that in writing of our own recent past we are continually meeting ourselves coming the other way.

  Terry Eagleton

  Moving, Writing, Past

  Terry Eagleton (2008). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.190, U of Minnesota Press

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• If history, philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research institute. But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and it would be deceptive to call it one.

  Terry Eagleton

  Philosophy, Academic Life, Training

  "The death of universities" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. December 17, 2010.

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• Rousseau ranks among the great educational theorists of the modern era, even if he was the last man to put in charge of a classroom. Young adults, he thought, should be allowed to develop their capabilities in their distinctive way.

  Terry Eagleton

  Educational, Men, Adults

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

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• An enlightened trust in the sovereignty of human reason can be every bit as magical as the exploits of Merlin, and a faith in our capacity for limitless self-improvement just as much a wide-eyed superstition as a faith in leprechauns.

  Terry Eagleton

  Self, Superstitions, Improvement

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• I say that virtue is really all about enjoying yourself, living fully; but of course it is far from obvious what living fully actually means.

  Terry Eagleton

  Mean, Virtue, Enjoy

  "Ideas for modern living: virtue" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. September 11, 2010.

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• The government spokesman announces that there is no truth in the charges of widespread corruption within the Cabinet; nobody believes him; he knows that nobody believes him, we know that he knows it, and he knows it too.

  Terry Eagleton

  Believe, Government, Cabinets

  Terry Eagleton (1991). “Ideology: An Introduction”, p.40, Verso

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