Discourse Quotes - Page 11

• The unification of opposites which characterizes the commercial and political style is one of the many ways in which discourse and communication make themselves immune against the expression of protest and refusal.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Communication, Expression, Opposites

  Herbert Marcuse (2012). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.90, Beacon Press

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• Just as a moral distinction is drawn between "those at risk" and "those posing a risk", health education routinely draws a distinction between the harm caused by external causes out of the individual's control and that caused by oneself. Lifestyle risk discourse overturns the notion that health hazards in postindustrial society are out of the individual's control. On the contrary, the dominant theme of lifestyle risk discourse is the responsibility of the individual to avoid health risks for the sake of his or her own health as well as the greater good of society.

  Deborah Lupton

  Responsibility, Health Education, Risk

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• Health education emphasizing risks is a form of pedagogy, which, like other forms, serves to legitimize ideologies and social practices. Risk discourse in the public health sphere allows the state, as the owner of knowledge, to exert power of the bodies of its citizens. Risk discourse, therefore, especially when it emphasizes lifestyle risks, serves as an effective Foucauldian agent of surveillance and control that is difficult to challenge because of its manifest benevolent goal of maintaining standards of health. In doing so, it draws attention away from the structural causes of ill-health.

  Deborah Lupton

  Health Education, Practice, Ill Health

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• I felt like there wasn't a political discourse. I felt like there was just one set of values, and any one set of values was wrong; that there should at least be room for conversation.

  Cecily McMillan

  Political, Rooms, Should

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I think the reason you see so many people dropping out of politics is because there's an anti-poetic strain in modern political discourse.

  Zephyr Teachout

  Thinking, People, Political

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I'm interested in the way the whole cultural landscape can shift over time. Okay, this will seem like a silly example, but look at the whole discourse around "selling out," a concept people say is irrelevant because there's no more distinction between mainstream and underground, inside and outside (which I don't really believe, but that's another issue).

  Astra Taylor

  Believe, Silly, Issues

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Within our lifetime, we can remember a time when Islamism wasn't the dominant form of discourse or the aim should be to minimise the absolutists within any religious community and contain them.

  Maajid Nawaz

  Religious, Community, Remember

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• I have received your letter of the 6th, with the eloquent discourse delivered at the consecration of the Jewish Synagogue. Having ever regarded the freedom of religious opinions and worship as equally belonging to every sect, and the secure enjoyment of it as the best human provision for bringing all either into the same way of thinking, or into that mutual charity which is the only substitute, I observe with pleasure the view you give of the spirit in which your sect partake of the blessings offered by our Government and laws.

  James Madison

  Religious, Thinking, Blessing

  James Madison (1867). “1816-1828”, p.97

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• Kitschis one of the major categories of the modern object. Knick-knacks, rustic odds-and-ends, souvenirs, lampshades, and African masks: the kitsch-object is collectively this whole plethora of "trashy," sham or faked objects, this whole museum of junk which proliferates everywhere.... Kitsch is the equivalent to the "cliché" in discourse.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Museums, Odds, Kitsch

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• There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature, such as it is, weak or strong, and the thing which pleases us. Whatever is formed according to this standard pleases us, be it house, song, discourse, verse, prose, woman, birds, rivers, trees, room, dress, and so on. Whatever is not made according to this standard displeases those who have good taste.

  Blaise Pascal

  Beauty, Song, Strong

  Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters & Minor Works”, p.16, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Our senses perceive no extreme. Too much sound deafens us; too much light dazzles us; too great distance or proximity hinders ourview. Too great length and too great brevity of discourse tends to obscurity; too much truth is paralyzing.... In short, extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them.

  Blaise Pascal

  Truth, Distance, Light

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• The mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an enquiry or discourse concerning the others: and if we think ofa wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it.

  David Hume

  Pain, Thinking, Reflection

  David Hume, Eric Steinberg (1992). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature”, p.14, Hackett Publishing

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• If conservatives come to control the White House and both Houses of Congress, there will be very little change in Hollywood, the network evening news, universities, church bureaucracies, the New York Times, or the Washington Post. Institutions that are overwhelmingly left-liberal will continue to misinform the public and distort public discourse.

  Robert Bork

  Christian, Religious, New York

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• For God to be kept out of the classroom or out of America's public debate by nervous school administrators or overcautious politicians serves no one's interests. That restriction prevents people from drawing on this country's rich and diverse religious heritage for guidance, and it degrades the nation's moral discourse by placing a whole realm of theological reasoning out of bounds. The price of that sort of quarantine, at a time of moral dislocation, is - and has been - far too high.

  Nancy Gibbs

  Christian, Country, Religious

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• Our culture's tolerance wears thin when religion intrudes on the public discourse... Our schools, courtrooms, and libraries set the tone for the entire society. The message they currently communicate is harsh and unambiguous: religion is offensive and should be kept out of public view.

  Ralph E. Reed, Jr.

  Christian, Religious, School

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• Two truths are all too often overshadowed in today's political discourse: Public service is a most honorable pursuit, and so is bipartisanship.

  Olympia Snowe

  Two, Political, Today

  "Olympia Snowe: Why I’m Leaving The Senate" by Olympia Snowe, www.washingtonpost.com. March 1, 2012.

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• Defining and celebrating the New Father are by far the most popular ideas in our contemporary discourse on fatherhood. Father as close and nurturing, not distant and authoritarian. Fatherhood as more than bread winning. Fatherhood as new-and-improved masculinity. Fathers unafraid of feelings. Fathers without sexism. Fatherhood as fifty-fifty parenthood, undistorted by arbitrary gender divisions or stifling social roles.

  David Blankenhorn

  Father, Winning, Ideas

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• Johnson is wise, Boswell foolish; Johnson warns and abstains, Boswell plunges; Johnson is rather a great man writing than a greatwriter, Boswell is a great writer and an ordinary man; and they are two of a kind, abysmal melancholics and compulsive socializers, afraid of solitude and afraid of death and dissolution, victims of themselves, meant for each other, needing each other, needing evidence and arguments (Boswell is a lawyer, Johnson magisterially dictates to him some of his briefs), making beautiful models of rational discourse out of the useful substance of all they know.

  Marvin Mudrick

  Friendship, Beautiful, Wise

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• A critical discourse that had respect for the mystery of art would look to the sense of life which finds expression in paradox, metaphor, tautology, and syntax.

  Denis Donoghue

  Art, Expression, Syntax

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• The debates are part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have become a format that defies meaningful discourse. They should be charged with sabotaging the electoral process.

  Walter Cronkite

  Meaningful, Political, Campaigns

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• Every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of voice, was so perfectly well turned and well placed, that, without being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleased with the discourse; a pleasure of much the same kind with that received from an excellent piece of music. This is an advantage itinerant preachers have over those who are stationary, as the latter can not well improve their delivery of a sermon by so many rehearsals.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Voice, Pieces, Rehearsal

  Benjamin Franklin (1818). “The Works of Dr. Benjamin Franklin: [Autobiography”, p.114

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• Philosophy is a slow process of logic and logical discourse: A bringing B bringing C and so forth. In mysticism you can jump from A to Z. But the ultimate objective is the same. It's knowledge. It's truth.

  Elie Wiesel

  Philosophy, Logic, Process

  Elie Wiesel, Robert Franciosi (2002). “Elie Wiesel: Conversations”, p.87, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The Jesuits were good educators, exceptional teachers. In an era and in a society where freedom of speech was not held in high regard, of course, that the discourse be focused on what they were teaching, but we were able to go beyond this framework without incurring too great a risk.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Teacher, Teaching, Risk

  Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1995). “Memoirs”, McClelland & Stewart Limited

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• The left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition. The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian. It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences from social ostracism to vocational defenestration upon those who refuse to be silenced.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Attitude, Winning, Trying

  "Charles Krauthammer: Thought police on patrol". www.washingtonpost.com. April 10, 2014.

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• Angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so: I mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice

  Izaak Walton

  Mean, Men, Practice

  1653 The Compleat Angler, pt.1, ch.1.

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