Terry Eagleton Quotes - Page 4

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• With fiction, you can talk about plot, character and narrative, whereas a poem brings home the fact that everything that happens in a work of literature happens in terms of language. And this is daunting stuff to deal with.

  Terry Eagleton

  Home, Character, Plot

  "A puritan at play" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. March 15, 2008.

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• Today, nostalgia is almost as unacceptable as racism.

  Terry Eagleton

  Racism, Today, Nostalgia

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• What's wrong with a bit of nostalgia between friends? I think nostalgia sometimes gets too much of a bad press.

  Terry Eagleton

  Thinking, Too Much, Nostalgia

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• Any attempt to define literary theory in terms of a distinctive method is doomed to failure.

  Terry Eagleton

  Literary Theory, Method, Term

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.172, John Wiley & Sons

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• Most poetry in the modern age has retreated to the private sphere, turning its back on the political realm.

  Terry Eagleton

  Political, Age, Spheres

  "Milton's republic" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. December 8, 2008.

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• Evil is often supposed to be without rhyme or reason.

  Terry Eagleton

  Evil, Reason, Rhyme

  Terry Eagleton (2010). “On Evil”, p.3, Yale University Press

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• History works itself out by an inevitable internal logic.

  Terry Eagleton

  Logic, Inevitable, Internals

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

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• If there are indeed any iron laws of history, one of them is surely that in any major crisis of the capitalist system, a sector of the liberal middle class will shift to the left, and then shift smartly back again once the crisis has blown over.

  Terry Eagleton

  Law, Class, Iron

  1993 In the London Review of Books, 2 Dec

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• The humanities should constitute the core of any university worth the name.

  Terry Eagleton

  Names, Humanity, Should

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

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• The most common mistake students of literature make is to go straight for what the poem or novel says, setting aside the way that it says it. To read like this is to set aside the ‘literariness’ of the work – the fact that it is a poem or play or novel, rather than an account of the incidence of soil erosion in Nebraska.

  Terry Eagleton

  Mistake, Erosion, Play

  Terry Eagleton (2013). “How to Read Literature”, p.2, Yale University Press

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• Americans use the word "dream" as often as psychoanalysts do.

  Terry Eagleton

  Dream, Use

  "Age of innocence" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. July 25, 2008.

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• Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.

  Terry Eagleton

  Political, Historical, Recipes

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Why Marx Was Right”, p.46, Yale University Press

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• Cynicism and naivety lie cheek by jowl in the American imagination; if the United States is one of the most venal nations on Earth, it is also one of the most earnestly idealistic.

  Terry Eagleton

  Lying, Imagination, United States

  "Age of innocence" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. July 25, 2008.

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• I value my Catholic background very much. It taught me not to be afraid of rigorous thought, for one thing.

  Terry Eagleton

  Catholic, Taught, Backgrounds

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• The political currents that topped the global agenda in the late 20th century - revolutionary nationalism, feminism and ethnic struggle - place culture at their heart.

  Terry Eagleton

  Struggle, Heart, Political

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

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• As far as belief goes, postmodernism prefers to travel light: it has beliefs, to be sure, but it does not have faith

  Terry Eagleton

  Light, Doe, Have Faith

  Terry Eagleton (2008). “The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction”, p.16, OUP Oxford

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• One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation, but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies.

  Terry Eagleton

  War, Enemy, Sides

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• God chose what is weakest in the world to shame the strong.

  Terry Eagleton

  Strong, World, Shame

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• To claim that science and religion pose different questions to the world is not to suggest that if the bones of Jesus were discovered in Palestine, the pope should get himself down to the dole queue as fast as possible. It is rather to claim that while faith, rather like love, must involve factual knowledge, it is not reducible to it.

  Terry Eagleton

  Jesus, Like Love, Different

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• Evil may be 'unscientific' but so is a song or a smile.

  Terry Eagleton

  Song, Evil, May

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• Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech.

  Terry Eagleton

  Everyday, Ordinary, Literature

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

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• There is no way in which we can retrospectively erase the Treaty of Vienna or the Great Irish Famine. It is a peculiar feature of human actions that, once performed, they can never be recuperated. What is true of the past will always be true of it.

  Terry Eagleton

  Past, Vienna, Peculiar

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• It is capitalism, not Marxism, that trades in futures.

  Terry Eagleton

  Literary Theory, Marxism, Trade

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

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• Yahweh is presented in the Jewish Bible as stateless and nationless. He can’t be used as a totem or fetish in that way.

  Terry Eagleton

  Yahweh, Way, Totems

  "Religion for radicals: An interview with Terry Eagleton". Interview with Nathan Schneider, blogs.ssrc.org. September 17, 2009.

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• For the liberal state to accommodate a diversity of beliefs while having few positive convictions is one of the more admirable achievements of civilization.

  Terry Eagleton

  Civilization, Diversity, Achievement

  "The liberal supremacists" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. April 24, 2009.

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