Discourse Quotes - Page 21

• While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane.

  Sam Harris

  Atheist, Believe, Sea

  Sam Harris (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• Is political discourse still just shouting opinions about subjective, hot-button issues based on poor understanding and outright ignorance about which agreements can never be reached?

  Jeffrey Rowland

  Ignorance, Issues, Agreement

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• To write or speak is to communicate. To communicate is to share meanings, make them ‘common’ to all participants in the discourse. (The etymological root of communication means ‘common.’)

  Robin Lakoff

  Communication, Writing, Mean

  Robin Tolmach Lakoff (2001). “The Language War”, p.59, Univ of California Press

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• [The sceptic] must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge any thing, that all human life must perish, were his principles to prevail.All discourse, all action would immediately cease, and men remain in a total lethargy, till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an end to their miserable existence.

  David Hume

  Men, Principles, Action

  David Hume (1788). “An inquiry concerning human understanding. A dissertation on the passions. An inquiry concerning the principles of morals. The natural history of religion”, p.162

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• The Olivet Discourse is not about the Second Coming of Christ. It is a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

  David Chilton

  Jerusalem, Christ, Destruction

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• The tragedy is that in the name of resisting the internal deterioration of faith and the corruption of the world around them, many Christians - and Christian conservatives most significantly -unwittingly embrace some of the most corrosive aspects of the cultural disintegration they decry. By nurturing its resentments, sustaining them through a discourse of negation toward outsiders, and in cases, pursuing their will to power, they become functional Nietzscheans, participating in the very cultural breakdown they so ardently strive resist.

  James Davison Hunter

  Christian, Names, Tragedy

  "To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World". Book by James Davison Hunter, 2010.

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• Jay-Z's a guy that wears the Che Guevara t-shirt and he doesn't realize Che Guevara was a racist. Che Guevara was a murderer and a killer. So look, he's an entertainer, obviously. He's not in the middle of any public discourse here. But I think it's important to point out when people take stances like this that are absurd.

  Marco Rubio

  Thinking, People, Guy

  Source: alter.newsweek.msnbc.com

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• With the artists, I don't teach, I coach. I can't tell them how to make art. I tell them to make more art. I tell them to get up early and stay up late. I tell them not to quit. I tell them if somebody else is already making their work. My job is to be current with the discourse and not be an asshole. That's all I wanted in a professor.

  Dave Hickey

  Art, Jobs, Up Early

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• I had parents who were attentive to what was going on politically. There was the Greek connection, a sense of a larger world. People coming in from abroad. There was a sense of community around ideas: a discourse and an adhesiveness which is my favorite word from [Walt] Whitman.

  Anne Waldman

  Ideas, Favorite Words, People

  Source: logosjournal.com

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• You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of complicated state of mind. The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.

  W. S. Gilbert

  Lying, Mind, Phrases

  'Patience' (1881) act 1

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• When artists and philosophers talk only amongst themselves, they ignore the potential of popular culture to become a variety of dialogues with and between everyday people. Its discourse may be productive of desire and pleasure, but popular culture is also a language in which people discuss politics, religion, ethics, and action.

  Brenda Laurel

  Artist, People, Everyday

  Brenda Laurel (2001). “Utopian Entrepreneur”, p.11, MIT Press

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• I hope progressive ways of thinking will permeate the "mainstream" more and more in the coming years. Goddess knows we have endured a very long spell (thirty plus years) of regressive thinking and hyper conservativism dominating our culture and national discourse. It necessitates risk taking and rule breaking by people in all walks of life to swing that pendulum back though.

  Ani DiFranco

  Thinking, Years, Swings

  Interview with Mary Ann Rossoni, get-ri.com. September 1, 2015.

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• A film is one small voice among other large ones. The film is a tiny part of the discourse. You do what you can but under no illusions of what a film can do.

  Ken Loach

  Voice, Tiny, Film

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• Religious faith is the only area of discourse where immunity through conversation is considered noble . It's the only area of our lives where someone can win points for saying, "There's nothing that you can do to change my mind and I'm taking no state of the world ultimately into account in believing what I believe. There's nothing to change about the world that would cause me to revise my beliefs.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Believe, Winning

  "The View From The End Of The World" by Sam Harris, December 9, 2005.

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• Long discourses, and philosophical readings, at best, amaze and confound, but do not instruct children. When I say, therefore, that they must be treated as rational creatures, I mean that you must make them sensible, by the mildness of your carriage, and in the composure even in the correction of them, that what you do is reasonable in you, and useful and necessary for them; and that it is not out of caprichio, passion or fancy, that you command or forbid them any thing.

  John Locke

  Children, Philosophical, Reading

  "Some Thoughts Concerning Education" by John Locke, (Sec. 81), 1693.

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• The Indians , whom we call barbarous, observe much more decency and civility in their discourses and conversation, giving one another a fair silent hearing till they have quite done; and then answering them calmly, and without noise or passion. And if it be not so in this civiliz'd part of the world, we must impute it to a neglect in education, which has not yet reform'd this antient piece of barbarity amongst us.

  John Locke

  Passion, Giving, Reform

  John Locke (2017). “Delphi Complete Works of John Locke (Illustrated)”, p.1542, Delphi Classics

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• We have entered an Orwellian era in which entitlement replaces responsibility, coercion is described as compassion, compulsory redistribution is called sharing, race quotas substitute for diversity, and suicide is prescribed as 'death with dignity.' Political discourse has become completely corrupted. The reason is that if you tell people directly that you want to raise their taxes, transfer their wealth, count them by skin color, or let doctors kill them, most will object. Statists know this and therefore are obliged to obfuscate.

  Theodore J. Forstmann

  Suicide, Responsibility, Compassion

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• I wish to note that the level of discourse in Nigeria is abysmally low, and, usually, garnished with character assassination. We allow our personal frustrations to becloud reason

  Dele Momodu

  Character, Frustration, Wish

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• Power is the ability to take one's place in whatever discourse is essential to action and the right to have one's part matter.

  Carolyn Heilbrun

  Essentials, Matter, Action

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• To separate journalism and poetry, therefore-history and poetry-to set them up at opposite ends of the world of discourse, is to separate seeing from the feel of seeing, emotion from the acting of emotion, knowledge from the realization of knowledge.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Opposites, Acting, Realization

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• People will be surprised at the eagerness with which we went aboutpretending to rouse from its slumber a sexuality which every­thing-our discourses, our customs, our institutions, our regulations, our knowledges-was busy producing in the light of day and broadcasting to noisy accompaniment.

  Michel Foucault

  Light, People, Regulation

  Michel Foucault (2012). “The History of Sexuality: An Introduction”, p.158, Vintage

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• One could say that what differentiates ancient from modern philosophy is the fact that, in ancient philosophy, it was not only Chrysippus or Epicurus who, just because they had developed a philosophical discourse, were considered philosophers. Rather, every person who lived according to the precepts of Chrysippus or Epicurus was every bit as much a philosopher as they.

  Pierre Hadot

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Facts

  "La Philosophie comme manière de vivre: Entretiens avec Jeannie Carlier et Arnold I. Davidson" by Pierre Hadot, Jeannie Carlier, Arnold I. Davidson, Paris: Albin Michel, translated by Michael Chase, (p. 272), 2001.

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• The agentive mind is not only active in nature, but it seeks out dialogue and discourse with other active minds. And it is through this dialogic, discursive process that we come to know the Other and his points of view, his stories. We learn an enormous amount not only about the world but about ourselves by discourse with Others.

  Jerome Bruner

  Views, Mind, Stories

  Jerome S. Bruner (1996). “The Culture of Education”, p.93, Harvard University Press

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• Her companion's discourse now sunk from its hitherto animated pitch, to nothing more than a short, decisive sentence of praise or condemnation on the face of every woman they met; and Catherine, after listening and agreeing as long as she could,with all the civility and deference of the youthful female mind, fearful of hazarding an opinion of its own in opposition to that of a self-assured man, especially where the beauty of her own sex is concerned, ventured at length to vary the subject.

  Jane Austen

  Sex, Men, Self

  Jane Austen, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Jane Austen: All novels, short stories, letters and poems”, p.974, GENERAL PRESS

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• This, then, is the truth of the discourse of universal human rights: the Wall separating those covered by the umbrella of Human Rights and those excluded from its protective cover. Any reference to universal human rights as an 'unfinished project' to be gradually extended to all people is here a vain ideological chimera - and, faced with this prospect, do we, in the West, have any right to condemn the excluded when they use any means, inclusive of terror, to fight their exclusion?

  Slavoj Žižek

  Wall, Mean, Fighting

  Slavoj Žižek (2002). “Welcome to the Desert of the Real!: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates”, p.150, Verso

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