Quote

Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.

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
Determinism
Recipe
Recipes
Historical
Political

More quotes by Terry Eagleton

Image
Anyone can be tolerant of those who are tolerant.
Terry Eagleton
Image
If we were not called upon to work in order to survive, we might simply lie around all day doing nothing.
Terry Eagleton
Image
Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman other or flawed derivative of the author the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.
Terry Eagleton
Image
In the deep night of metaphysics, all cats look black.
Terry Eagleton
Image
It is difficult to think of an origin without wanting to go back beyond it.
Terry Eagleton
Image
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
Image
Most poetry in the modern age has retreated to the private sphere, turning its back on the political realm.
Terry Eagleton
Image
It is silly to call fat people gravitationally challenged, a self-righteous fetishism of language which is no more than a symptom of political frustration.
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
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
Nothing in human life is inherently private.
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
Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely thrust into the political unconscious can sovereignty feel secure.
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
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
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
Image
The past can be used to renew the present, not just to bury it.
Terry Eagleton
Image
Evil is often supposed to be without rhyme or reason.
Terry Eagleton
Image
Successful revolutions are those which end up by erasing all traces of themselves.
Terry Eagleton
Image
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