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Like all the best radical positions, then, mine is a thoroughly traditionalist one.

Terry Eagleton

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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
Radical
Mines
Mine
Position
Best
Like
Traditionalist
Thoroughly
Positions

More quotes by Terry Eagleton

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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
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The most common mistake students of literature make is to go straight for what the poem or novel says, setting aside the way that it says it. To read like this is to set aside the ‘literariness’ of the work – the fact that it is a poem or play or novel, rather than an account of the incidence of soil erosion in Nebraska.
Terry Eagleton
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Today, nostalgia is almost as unacceptable as racism.
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Christian faith, as I understand it, is not primarily a matter of signing on for the proposition that there exists a Supreme Being, but the kind of commitment made manifest by a human being at the end of his tether, foundering in darkness, pain, and bewilderment, who nevertheless remains faithful to the promise of a transformative love.
Terry Eagleton
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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
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Reading is not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair: our initial speculations generate a frame of reference within which to interpret what comes next, but what comes next may retrospectively transform our original understanding, highlighting some features of it and backgrounding others.
Terry Eagleton
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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
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Capitalism cannot survive without a working class, while the working class can flourish a lot more freely without capitalism.
Terry Eagleton
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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
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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
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In the end, the humanities can only be defended by stressing how indispensable they are and this means insisting on their vital role in the whole business of academic learning, rather than protesting that, like some poor relation, they don't cost much to be housed.
Terry Eagleton
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I say that virtue is really all about enjoying yourself, living fully but of course it is far from obvious what living fully actually means.
Terry Eagleton
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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
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Man eternally tries to get back to an organic past that has slipped just beyond his reach.
Terry Eagleton
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Schizophrenic language has in this sense an interesting resemblance to poetry.
Terry Eagleton
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In the deep night of metaphysics, all cats look black.
Terry Eagleton
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Nothing in human life is inherently private.
Terry Eagleton
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The past can be used to renew the present, not just to bury it.
Terry Eagleton
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Language, identity and forms of life are the terms in which political demands are shaped and voiced.
Terry Eagleton
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It is capitalism, not Marxism, that trades in futures.
Terry Eagleton