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Stanley Fish

Stanley Fish Quotes

Scholar

Stanley Fish is an American scholar renowned for his contributions to the fields of law, literature, and critical theory. Born on April 19, 1938, he has been a professor at Yale University and the University of Chicago, as well as an accomplished writer and critic.

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All Sentences Writing Knows Firsts May Abortion Asks Choices Conviction Doe

Famous Stanley Fish Quotes

“The moral is clear: the choice is never between objectivity and interpretation but between an interpretation that is unacknowledged as such and an interpretation that is at least aware of itself.”

Reading Objectivity Literary Criticism Literary Theory

Book:Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities

Source: Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities

“Wij hebben geen onvervreemdbaar en 'natuurlijk' recht op het vrije woord. Elke samenleving zal bepaalde uitingen pornografisch of opruiend achten en taboe verklaren. De betekenis van zowel 'vrij' als 'woord' wordt doorlopend aangepast om aan de behoeften van de gemeenschap tegemoet te komen.”

Phylosophy Filosofie

Book:There's No Such Thing As Free Speech: And It's a Good Thing, Too

Source: There's No Such Thing As Free Speech: And It's a Good Thing, Too

“Despite the apparent absoluteness of the First Amendment, there are any number of ways of getting around it, ways that are known to any student of law. In general, the strategy is to manipulate the distinction between speech and action which is at bottom a distinction between inconsequential and consequential behavior.”

Way Firsts Action Law Numbers Known Students Speech Behavior Constitution Strategy Bottom Despite Distinction Amendments Manipulate First Amendment Inconsequential

Author:Stanley Fish

“It may sound paradoxical, but verbal fluency is the product of many hours spent writing about nothing, just as musical fluency is the product of hours spent repeating scales.”

Writing May Sound Hours Products Musical Scales Paradoxical Fluency

Author:Stanley Fish

“Know what makes a sentence more than a random list, practice constructing sentences and explaining what you have done, and you will know how to make sentences forever and you will know too when what you are writing doesn't make the grade because it has degenerated into a mere pile of discrete items.”

Knows Writing Done Practice Know How Forever Mere Sentences Lists Grades Items Explaining Discrete

Author:Stanley Fish

“People write or speak sentences in order to produce an effect, and the success of a sentence is measured by the degree to which the desired effect has been achieved.”

People Writing Has Beens Order Speak Effects Produce Degrees Sentences

Author:Stanley Fish

“Sentence writers are not copyists; they are selectors.”

Author:Stanley Fish

“What we know of the world comes to us through words, or, to look at it from the other direction, when we write a sentence, we create a world, which is not the world, but the world as is appears within a dimension of assessment.”

Knows World Writing Looks Sentences Dimensions Assessment

Author:Stanley Fish

“Just as you can practice three-word sentences or sentences that travel across time zones, so can you practice writing sentences that breathe unshakable conviction.”

Writing Three Practice Conviction Sentences Breathe Zone Unshakable Three Words Time Zones

Author:Stanley Fish

“The word "essay" means to try out, test, probe. In the essay style, successive clauses and sentences are not produced by an overarching logic, but by association; the impression that prose gives is that it can go anywhere in a manner wholly unpredictable.”

Giving Trying Mean Style Tests Logic Sentences Impression Prose Association Unpredictable Essays Clauses

Author:Stanley Fish

“The category of first sentence makes sense only if it is looking forward to the development of thematic concerns it perhaps only dimly foreshadows.”

Ifs Firsts Development Concern Sentences Make Sense Categories Looking Forward Thematic

Author:Stanley Fish

“Sentences can save us. Who could ask for anything more?”

Author:Stanley Fish

“Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matter of fact right.”

Values Goal Academic Freedom Of Speech Relevance Accuracy Matter Of Fact

Author:Stanley Fish

“Opinion-sharing sessions are like junk food: they fill you up with starch and leave you feeling both sated and hungry. A sustained inquiry into the truth of a matter is an almost athletic experience; it may exhaust you, but it also improves you.”

May Matter Feelings Opinion Hungry Inquiry Athletic Session Junk Junk Food Sated

Book:Save the World on Your Own Time

Source: Save the World on Your Own Time

“The first thing to ask when writing a sentence is 'What am I trying to do?'”

Writing Trying Firsts Asks Sentences

Author:Stanley Fish

“A pro-choice advocate sees abortion as a decision to be made in accordance with the best scientific opinion as to when the beginning of life, as we know it, occurs.”

Knows Made Choices Decision Opinion Abortion Beginning Of Life

Author:Stanley Fish

“The purpose of a good education is to show you that there are three sides to a two-sided story.”

Two Stories Shows Purpose Three Sides Education Lawyer Two Sides Good Education Three Sides

Author:Stanley Fish

“The idea - the core idea of humanism - is that the act of reading about great deeds will lead you to imitate them.”

Ideas Reading Humanism Deeds Core

Author:Stanley Fish

“This is what language does: organize the world into manageable, and in some sense artificial, units that can then be inhabited and manipulated.”

World Doe Language Artificial Organize Units Manageable

Book:How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One

Source: How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One

“No word floats without an anchoring connection within an overall structure.”

Connections Structure Floats

Book:How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One

Source: How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One

“Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead.”

Giving Language Shapes Perception

Author:Stanley Fish

“Any idea can be brought into the classroom if the point is to inquire into its structure, history, influence and so forth. But no idea belongs in the classroom if the point of introducing it is to recruit your students for the political agenda it may be thought to imply.”

Ifs May Ideas Political Influence Students Structure No Idea Agendas Classroom Introducing Recruit Political Agendas

Book:Think Again: Contrarian Reflections on Life, Culture, Politics, Religion, Law, and Education

Source: Think Again: Contrarian Reflections on Life, Culture, Politics, Religion, Law, and Education

“Belief and knowledge are considered to be two different things. But they are not.”

Two Different Belief Different Things Two Different Things

Author:Stanley Fish

“I do not support abortion rights. Although what I would support in this vexed area is not clear to me.”

Support Clear Rights Areas Abortion Abortion Rights

Book:The Trouble with Principle

Source: The Trouble with Principle

“In general, higher education does not know how to speak for its interests. It offers a stance that is defensive, cowardly and likely to be ineffective.”

Knows Doe Speak Interest Know How Higher Offers Cowardly Stance Higher Education General Education

Author:Stanley Fish

“It is always incorrect to assume you can know what someone's moral convictions are based on their philosophical theories.”

Knows Moral Theory Philosophical Assuming Conviction

Author:Stanley Fish

“It is of no help to us that there is an absolute truth of the matter of things because unfortunately, none of us are in a position to say definitively what that is - although we all think that we are.”

Thinking Matter Helping Position Absolutes Absolute Truth

Author:Stanley Fish

“Many people on the political left found my work psychologically liberating. They began to say: once you realize that standards emerge historically, then you can see through and discard all the norms to which we have been falsely enslaved.”

People Has Beens Political Found Left Realizing Standards Norm Liberating

Author:Stanley Fish

“We in universities are not in the democracy business. What we do, when we're doing it, is teach and learn.”

Teach Democracy University

Author:Stanley Fish

“I should have known better. Pro-life arguments are now based on scientific evidence and the pro-choice arguments are not. That is a cultural, historical fact.”

Should Facts Choices Known Evidence Argument Should Have Historical Pro Life Should Have Known Historical Facts Scientific Evidence Pro Choice Abortion Should Have Known Better

Author:Stanley Fish

About the Author

Born: April 19, 1938
Known for: Scholar
Quotes: 30

Related Topics

Sentences Writing Knows Firsts May Abortion Asks Choices Conviction Doe

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read OneRelated source material

Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive CommunitiesRelated source material

Save the World on Your Own TimeRelated source material

The Trouble with PrincipleRelated source material

There's No Such Thing As Free Speech: And It's a Good Thing, TooRelated source material

Think Again: Contrarian Reflections on Life, Culture, Politics, Religion, Law, and EducationRelated source material

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