Quote

The pessimism of the intellect is the starting point for struggle. It's not the end point, it's the starting point. You have to make something critical to make it meaningful, to make it transformative.

Henry Giroux

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Henry Giroux
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 18
Journalist
Teacher
Providence
Rhode Island
Meaningful
Intellect
Critical
Starting
Struggle
Point
Something
Transformative
Make
Pessimism

More quotes by Henry Giroux

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Violence comes in many forms and can be particularly disturbing when confronted in an educational setting if handled dismissively or in ways that blame victims.
Henry Giroux
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Unless you recognize the contradictions within various strata, you fall prey to a really kind of false homogenization that does not do justice to the way in which those contradictions can be both understood and is sometimes actually used to the benefit of people who need them.
Henry Giroux
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But we need more than a broader understanding of what is a good society or a moral and political critique of the existing market fundamentalism engulfing American society, we also need to create new forms of solidarity, new and broad based social movements that move beyond the isolated and fractured politics of the current historical moment.
Henry Giroux
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The domestic war against terrorists [code for young protesters] provides new opportunities for major defense contractors and corporations who are becoming more a part of our domestic lives.
Henry Giroux
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It is important to note that Edward Snowden was labeled as a spy not a whistle-blower - even though he exposed the reach of the spy services into the lives of most Americans. More importantly, he was denounced as being part of a generation that unfortunately combined being educated with a distrust of authority.
Henry Giroux
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The war on terror, rebranded under Obama as the Overseas Contingency Operation, has morphed into war on democracy.
Henry Giroux
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The social media not only become new platforms for the invasion of privacy, but further legitimate a culture in which monitoring functions are viewed as benign while the state-sponsored society of hyper-fear increasingly defines everyone as either a snitch or a terrorist.
Henry Giroux
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Ruling elite have think tanks, they have research institutes, they've invaded universities, they've monopolized the cultural apparatuses.
Henry Giroux
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You had workers' movements. You had left organizations, the Communist Party, that were mobilizing in profoundly powerful ways to basically address the great injustices of capitalism.
Henry Giroux
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The promises of higher education and previously enviable credentials have turned into the swindle of fulfillment.
Henry Giroux
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When we talk about total war, and we talk about war zones, and we talk about the breakdown of the cities, when you exclude questions of race from that discourse, something disappears that's really central to the forms of repression that we're talking about.
Henry Giroux
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Young black men in America have an identity ascribed to them that is a direct legacy of slavery.
Henry Giroux
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Education must become central to any viable notion of politics willing to imagine a life and future outside of casino capitalism.
Henry Giroux
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I think that contradictions, unless they're understood, unless they're analyzed, unless they're thoughtfully probed, unless people have a sense of what those contradictions mean - there's just as much of a chance that they'll move into embracing fascism as there is that they'll move into a more radical conception of democracy itself.
Henry Giroux
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There is a need for subjects who find intense pleasure in commodification of violence and a culture of cruelty.
Henry Giroux
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We need to educate students to be critical agents, to learn how to take risks, engage in thoughtful dialogue, and taking on the crucial issue what it means to be socially responsible.
Henry Giroux
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We need a new political language with broader narratives. Such a language has to unravel the pervasive ideological, pedagogical, and economic dynamics of a form of economic Darwinism that now governs much of the world. This system must be demystified, politicized, and recognized for the ways in which it has come to pose a dire threat to democracy.
Henry Giroux
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Young children are being arrested and subjected to court appearances for behaviors that can only be termed as trivial.
Henry Giroux
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Only a well-organized movement of young people, educators, workers, parents, religious groups and other concerned citizens will be capable of changing the power relations and vast economic inequalities that have generated what has become a country in which it is almost impossible to recognize the ideals of a real democracy.
Henry Giroux
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Very little appears to escape the infantilizing and moral vacuity of the market.
Henry Giroux