Discourse Quotes - Page 19

• Of Nature itself upon the soul; the sunrise, the haze of autumn, the winter starlight seem interlocutors; the prevailing sense is that of an exposition in poetry; a high discourse, the voice of the speaker seems to breathe as much from the landscape as from his own breast; it is Nature communing with the seer.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Winter, Autumn, Voice

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• I have and I will always work to promote a civil public discourse.

  Bob Etheridge

  Public Discourse

  "Bob Etheridge Attacks Student: North Carolina Congressman Gets Rough With Interviewer" by Nick Wing, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 14, 2010.

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• I am interested in levels of brain discourse. How articulate are the voices in your head? You know, there's a different voice for the phone, and a different voice if you're talking in bed. When you're starting off with a narrator, it's interesting to think, where is their voice coming from, what part of their brain?

  Anne Enright

  Thinking, Phones, Talking

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• I believe in poetic discourse, in the value of speech in a non-naturalistic way; it's speculative.

  Howard Barker

  Believe, Speech, Way

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• The dominance of [an ideology] is shown by the fact that the dominated classes live their conditions of political existence through the forms of dominant political discourse: this means that often they live even their revolt against domination of the system within the frame of reference of the dominant legitimacy.

  Nicos Poulantzas

  Mean, Class, Political

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• Much of the left's hate speech bears greater similarity to a psychological disorder than to standard political discourse. The hatred is blinding, producing logical contradictions that would be impossible to sustain were it not for the central element faith plays in the left's new religion. The basic tenet of their faith is this: Maybe they were wrong about their facts and policies, but they are good and conservatives are evil. You almost want to give it to them. It's all they have left.

  Ann Coulter

  Hate, Psychological Disorders, Play

  "Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right". Book by Ann Coulter, 2002.

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• To counter the fixation on a rhetoric of victimhood, black folks must engage in a discourse of self-determination.

  Bell Hooks

  Determination, Self, Black

  "Killing Rage: Ending Racism". Book by Bell Hooks, September 15, 1995.

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• If one wishes to know love, one must live love, in action. Thoughts, readings and discourse on love are of value only as they present questions to be acted upon.

  Leo Buscaglia

  Reading, Wish, Action

  Leo F. Buscaglia (1972). “Love”, Fawcett

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• There are very few people who have committed more to the pro-life discourse than Rob has. He's spent time in jail. He has really lived it. He has committed everything he's had to it. If in fact he believes that every human life was sacred, I knew that if he had his conscious awakened, I knew he wouldn't be able to close his eyes to it.

  Abigail Disney

  Believe, Eye, Jail

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Norms appearing in the form of law entitle actors to exercise their rights or liberties. However, one cannot determine which of these laws are legitimate simply by looking at the form of individual rights. Only by bringing in the discourse principle can one show that each person is owed a right to the greatest possible measure of equal liberties that are mutually compatible.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Exercise, Rights, Law

  "Between Facts and Norms". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1992.

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• What modernity requires is not that you cease living according to your faith, but that you accept that others may differ and that therefore politics requires a form of discourse that is reasonable and accessible to believer and non-believer alike. This religious restraint in politics is critical to the maintenance of liberal democracy.

  Andrew Sullivan

  Religious, Democracy, May

  "Of Modern Faith". "The Daily Dish", December 14, 2008.

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• Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

  Italo Calvino

  Dream, Cities, Perspective

  "Invisible Cities". Book by Italo Calvino, www.theguardian.com. 1972.

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• What should we speak of When we are old as you? when we shall hear The rain and wind beat dark December? how, In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse The freezing hours away?

  William Shakespeare

  Rain, Dark, Wind

  'Cymbeline' (1609-10) act 3, sc. 3, l. 35

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• The violent illiteracies of the graffiti, the clenched silence of the adolescent, the nonsense cries from the stage-happening, are resolutely strategic. The insurgent and the freak-out have broken off discourse with a cultural system which they despise as a cruel, antiquated fraud. They will not bandy words with it. Accept, even momentarily, the conventions of literate linguistic exchange, and you are caught in the net of the old values, of the grammars that can condescend or enslave.

  George Steiner

  Broken, Silence, Society

  George Steiner (1987). “George Steiner: A Reader”, p.432, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Theology, Subjects, Supreme Being

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred R. Ferguson (1965). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume V: 1835-1838”, p.305, Harvard University Press

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• TV serves us most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse - news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion.

  Neil Postman

  Junk, News, Entertainment

  Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.159, Penguin

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• What does it really mean to be a leftist in the early part of the 21st century? What are we really talking about? And I can just be very candid with you. It means to have a certain kind of temperament, to make certain kinds of political and ethical choices, and to exercise certain analytical focuses in targeting on the catastrophic and the monstrous, the scandalous, the traumatic, that are often hidden and concealed in the deodorized and manicured discourses of the mainstream. That's what it means to be a leftist. So let's just be clear about it.

  Cornel West

  Mean, Exercise, Talking

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• This was a good example of the fascist policing of public discourse in this country by nominal liberals who have become as unthinkingly wedded to dogma as any junior member of the Spanish Inquisition.

  Camille Paglia

  Country, Example, Politics

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• The short interregnum of civil society built on the ruins of the Bastille came to its end with the establishment of the Jews as the new Priestly caste. The alternative Church of our society, the Jews, survived in abeyance for hundreds of years. As long as the Christian Church attended to the discourse, the Jews plainly had no chance to compete; but when its power was broken by liberty-seekers, the alternative arrangement came forward.

  Israel Shamir

  Christian, Years, Long

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• The reduction of political discourse to sound bites is one of the worst things that's happened in American political life.

  John Silber

  Political, Sound, Propaganda

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• Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires.

  Edward Said

  Order, Tyrants, Democracy

  Edward W. Said (2014). “Orientalism”, p.21, Vintage

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• We will convert the entire world to Islam with our logic. We are confident that the Islamic logic, culture, and discourse can prove their superiority in all fields over all schools of thought and theories.

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

  Islamic, School, Insane

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• Once infected, the individual [infected with a god virus] cannot detect major contradictions in his beliefs and behavior. Belief systems become self-evident to him, and no amount of logical discourse will move him from his belief. If a Mormon and Catholic were to debate the merits of their respective religions, neither could see his own inconsistencies and logical fallacies, but would see the other's quite clearly.

  Darrel Ray

  Moving, Self, Catholic

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• The search for the means to put an end to things, an end to speech, is what enables the discourse to continue.

  Samuel Beckett

  Mean, Speech, Ends

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Unnamable”, p.12, Faber & Faber

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• The unconscious is the discourse of the Other.

  Jacques Lacan

  Unconscious

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