Discourse Quotes - Page 5

• Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.

  John Lewis

  Hatred, Political, Sowing

  "John Lewis Condemns GOP Campaign Tactics". voices.washingtonpost.com. October 11, 2008.

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• Stricken by a guilty conscience, some men will say that I speak with excessive temerity about all men in general. They are greatly mistaken. If they behave justly, they will be protected from my attacks and those of others. I separate the just from the wicked (who are the subject of my discourse), since not all men are bad and not all women are good.

  Arcangela Tarabotti

  Men, Wicked, Speak

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• If there is an ‘overabundance’ of an idea in the absence of direct governmental action - which there well might be when compared with some ideal state of public debate - then action disfavoring that idea might ‘un-skew,’ rather than skew, public discourse.

  Elena Kagan

  Ideas, Might, Action

  "Kagan Argued for Government 'Redistribution of Speech'" by Matt Cover, www.cnsnews.com. May 11, 2010.

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• An anecdote is related of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621-1683), who, in speaking of religion, said, "People differ in their discourse and profession about these matters, but men of sense are really but of one religion." To the inquiry of "What religion?" the Earl said, "Men of sense never tell it".

  Gilbert Burnet

  Men, People, Anecdotes

  "Burnet's history of my own time". Book by by Gilbert Burnet, vol. i, p. 175, 1833.

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• It's very fashionable to talk about human trafficking, in this fantastic A-C hall. It's very nice for discussion, discourse, making films and everything. But it is not nice to bring them to our homes. It's not nice to give them employment in our factories, our companies. It's not nice for our children to study with their children. There it ends. That's my biggest challenge.

  Sunitha Krishnan

  Children, Motivation, Nice

  "The fight against sex slavery". TED Talk, www.ted.com. November 2009.

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• A truly great university is a nucleus of artistic expression. It fosters creative, critical thought, and serves as a platform for civil discourse.

  Gordon Gee

  Expression, Creative, Nucleus

  "Of Leibovitz and Lear" by E. Gordon Gee, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 27, 2012.

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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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• When I was younger, I used to be very impatient with anyone who wasn't doing overtly political work. I've since come to feel that some writers have an appetite or a need for the political, for political discourse, for historical political subjects.

  Tony Kushner

  Political, Historical, Needs

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Part of the puzzle, surely, lies in the disconnect between official rhetoric and lived realities. Americans are constantly extolling “traditions”; litanies to family values are at the center of every politician’s discourse. And yet the culture of America is extremely corrosive of family life, indeed of all traditions except those redefined as “identities” that fit in the larger patterns of distinctiveness, cooperation, and openness to innovation.

  Susan Sontag

  Lying, Reality, America

  Susan Sontag, Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (2003). “Susan Sontag: Ansprachen aus Anlass der Verleihung”

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• The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention—distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence—is really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Ideas, Mind

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.25, W. W. Norton & Company

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• This progressive effacement of human relationships is not without certain problems for the novel. How, in point of fact, would one handle the narration of those unbridled passions, stretching over many years, and at times making their effect felt on several generations? We’re a long way from Wuthering Heights, to say the least. The novel form is not conceived for depicting indifference or nothingness; a flatter, more terse, and dreary discourse would need to be invented.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Passion, Years, Long

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• Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself. Finding one's voice isn't just an emptying and purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discourses. Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. Any artist knows these truths, no matter how deeply he or she submerges that knowing.

  Lewis Hyde

  Art, Memories, Inspiration

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• It is becoming plain that our liberal regime of equality and personal freedom depends, more than most theorists of liberalism have been willing to admit, on the existence and support of certain social assumptions and practices: the belief that each and every human being possesses great and inherent value, the willingness to respect the rights of others even at the cost of some disadvantages to one's self, the ability to defer some immediate benefits for the sake of long-range goals, and a regard for reason-giving and civility in public discourse.

  Mary Ann Glendon

  Rights, Self, Practice

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• 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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• 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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• While self-interest arising from the enjoyment of meat eating is obviously one reason for its entrenchment, and inertia another, a process of language usage engulfs discussions about meat by constructing the discourse in such a way that these issues need never be addressed. Language distances us from the reality of meat eating, thus reinforcing the symbolic meaning of meat eating, a symbolic meaning that is intrinsically patriarchal and male-oriented. Meat becomes a symbol for what is not seen but is always there--patriarchal control of animals and of language.

  Carol J. Adams

  Distance, Reality, Animal

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• Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Lying, Animal, Men

  Leonardo Da Vinci, General Press (2016). “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”, p.444, GENERAL PRESS

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• Indeed, theological discourse offers its strange jubilation only to the strict extent that it permits and, dangerously, demands of it wokman that he speak beyond his means, precisely because he does not speak of himself. Hence the danger of a speech that, in a sense, speaks against the one who lends himself to it. One must obtain forgiveness for every essay in theology. In all senses.

  Jean-Luc Marion

  Mean, Doe, Demand

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• A lot of people who voted for Barack Obama expected and were led to expect something new in politics: a new tone of political discourse in Washington. And I think - I think they're disappointed, because Barack Obama is not a new kind of politician. In fact, he's an old Chicago politician.

  Bernard Goldberg

  Thinking, People, Political

  "Bernie Goldberg on Obama's Strengths and Weaknesses in 2012 Election". "The O'Reilly Factor", www.foxnews.com. May 31, 2011.

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• You need to go and find someone to teach you the rudiments of irrational discourse.

  Larry Wall

  Needs, Computer, Irrational

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• The need for civility in society has never been more important. The foundation of kindness and civility begins in our homes. It is not surprising that our public discourse has declined in equal measure with the breakdown of the family. The family is the foundation for love and for maintaining spirituality. The family promotes an atmosphere where religious observance can flourish. There is indeed beauty all around when there's love at home.

  Quentin L. Cook

  Religious, Kindness, Home

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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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• 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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• 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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