Quote

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.

Terry Eagleton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Terry Eagleton
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: February 22
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Literary Theorist
Non-Fiction Writer
Researcher
University Teacher
Writer
Salford
Greater Manchester
Sides
Terror
Enemy
Effect
Alarmingly
Called
Crisis
Illiberal
State
General
Legislation
War
Effects
Liberalism
Problem
Deals
Liberal
States
Side
Anti
Question
Enemies

More quotes by Terry Eagleton

Image
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
Image
It is language which speaks in literature, in all its swarming 'polysemic' plurality, not the author himself.
Terry Eagleton
Image
Virtue is something you have to get good at, like playing the trombone or tolerating bores at parties. Being a virtuous human being takes practice and those who are brilliant at being human (what Christians call the saints) are the virtuosi of the moral sphere - the Pavarottis and Maradonas of virtue.
Terry Eagleton
Image
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
Image
Post-structuralism is among other things a kind of theoretical hangover from the failed uprising of ‘68, a way of keeping the revolution warm at the level of language, blending the euphoric libertarianism of that moment with the stoical melancholia of its aftermath.
Terry Eagleton
Image
We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt culture means a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and arational.
Terry Eagleton
Image
Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.
Terry Eagleton
Image
You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism.
Terry Eagleton
Image
Deconstruction insists not that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.
Terry Eagleton
Image
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
Image
The political currents that topped the global agenda in the late 20th century - revolutionary nationalism, feminism and ethnic struggle - place culture at their heart.
Terry Eagleton
Image
Negativity is often looked upon [in the USA] as a kind of thought crime. Not since the advent of socialist realism has the world witnessed such pathological upbeatness.
Terry Eagleton
Image
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
Image
The most compelling confirmation of Marx's theory of history is late capitalist society. There is a sense in which this case is becoming truer as time passes.
Terry Eagleton
Image
To declare in St John's words that Jesus and the Father are one is to claim that Jesus's dependence on the Other is not self-estrangement but self-ful lment. At the core of his identity ..lies nothing but unconditional love.
Terry Eagleton
Image
The frontier between public and private shifts from time to time and culture to culture.
Terry Eagleton
Image
It is false to believe that the sun revolves around the earth, but it is not absurd.
Terry Eagleton
Image
There is an insuperable problem about introducing immigrants to British values. There are no British values. Nor are there any Serbian or Peruvian values. No nation has a monopoly on fairness and decency, justice and humanity.
Terry Eagleton
Image
Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech.
Terry Eagleton
Image
Capitalism cannot survive without a working class, while the working class can flourish a lot more freely without capitalism.
Terry Eagleton