Terry Eagleton Quotes

Deconstruction insists not that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.
Terry Eagleton

Truth, Insists, Illusory

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

Life, Everyone, Fairness

Americans use the word 'dream' as often as psychoanalysts do.
Terry Eagleton

Dream, Often, Word

Anyone can be tolerant of those who are tolerant.
Terry Eagleton

Anyone, Tolerant

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

Lie, American, Earth

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

Faith, School, Children

Evil is often supposed to be without rhyme or reason.
Terry Eagleton

Evil, Reason, Often

Evil is unintelligible. It is just a thing in itself, like boarding a crowded commuter train wearing only a giant boa constrictor. There is no context which would make it explicable.
Terry Eagleton

Evil, Train, Context

For Aristotle, goodness is a kind of prospering in the precarious affair of being human.
Terry Eagleton

Human, Goodness, Affair

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

Positive, Few, While

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

Power, Political, Down

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

God, Strong, Shame

I attacked Dawkins's book on God because I think he is theologically illiterate.
Terry Eagleton

God, Book, Illiterate

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.
Terry Eagleton

Good, Stupid, Forget

I liked early Amis a lot, but I stopped reading him some time ago. I admire Hitchens on literary topics - I think he is very astute. McEwan, I read a bit. But I suppose it's more the ideological phenomenon that they represent together that interests me.
Terry Eagleton

Time, Together, Him

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

Yourself, Living, Far

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

Thought, Afraid, Value

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

Life, History, May

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.
Terry Eagleton

Knowledge, Someone, Book

In the end, it is because the media are driven by the power and wealth of private individuals that they turn private lives into public spectacles. If every private life is now potentially public property, it is because private property has undermined public responsibility.
Terry Eagleton

Life, Power, End

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.
Terry Eagleton

Business, Learning, End

Irish fiction is full of secrets, guilty pasts, divided identities. It is no wonder that there is such a rich tradition of Gothic writing in a nation so haunted by history.
Terry Eagleton

History, Writing, Rich

It is easy to see why a diversity of cultures should confront power with a problem. If culture is about plurality, power is about unity. How can it sell itself simultaneously to a whole range of life forms without being fatally diluted?
Terry Eagleton

Life, Power, Why

It is in Rousseau's writing above all that history begins to turn from upper-class honour to middle-class humanitarianism. Pity, sympathy and compassion lie at the centre of his moral vision. Values associated with the feminine begin to infiltrate social existence as a whole, rather than being confined to the domestic sphere.
Terry Eagleton

History, Sympathy, Writing

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.
Terry Eagleton

True, Evil, Nothing

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Biography

Nationality: English

Type: Critic

Born: February 22, 1943

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