Terry Eagleton Quotes
-
Most poetry in the modern age has retreated to the private sphere, turning its back on the political realm.
-
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.
-
If the masses are not thrown a few novels , they may react by throwing up a few barricades.
-
I enjoy popularisation and I think I'm reasonably good at it. I also think it's a duty. It's just so pedagogically stupid to forget how difficult one found these ideas oneself to begin with.
-
If we were not called upon to work in order to survive, we might simply lie around all day doing nothing.
-
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.
-
Nothing in human life is inherently private.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
You've got to have a sense of different audiences. I'm a kind of performer manque - I come from a long line of failed actors!
-
The British are supposed to be particularly averse to intellectuals, a prejudice closely bound up with their dislike of foreigners. Indeed, one important source of this Anglo-Saxon distaste for highbrows and eggheads was the French revolution, which was seen as an attempt to reconstruct society on the basis of abstract rational principles.
-
The truth is that the past exists no more than the future, even though it feels as though it does.
-
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.
-
Evil may be 'unscientific' but so is a song or a smile.
-
You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism.
-
History works itself out by an inevitable internal logic.
-
It is true that some liberals and humanists, along with the laid-back Danes, deny the existence of evil. This is largely because they regard the word 'evil' as a device for demonising those who are really nothing more than socially unfortunate.
-
I value my Catholic background very much. It taught me not to be afraid of rigorous thought, for one thing.
-
Being brought up in a culture is a matter of learning appropriate forms of feeling as much as particular ways of thinking.
-
In the end, the humanities can only be defended by stressing how indispensable they are; and this means insisting on their vital role in the whole business of academic learning, rather than protesting that, like some poor relation, they don't cost much to be housed.
-
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.
-
It is false to believe that the sun revolves around the earth, but it is not absurd.
-
It is true that too much belief can be bad for your health.