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Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton Quotes

Literary critic

Terry Eagleton is a renowned British literary critic, known for his research on Marxist literary theory. His work spans a wide range of literary and theoretical topics, influencing cultural studies and political commentary as well.

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Famous Terry Eagleton Quotes

“[F]or the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham. The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks. Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey.”

“Genuine equality means not treating everyone the same, but attending equally to everyone’s different needs.”

Needs Mean Different Genuine Attending

Author:Terry Eagleton

“It is capitalism, not Marxism, that trades in futures.”

Capitalism Trade Marxism Literary Theory

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Being brought up in a culture is a matter of learning appropriate forms of feeling as much as particular ways of thinking.”

Thinking Way Matter Feelings Form Culture Particular Appropriate Way Of Thinking

Book:How to Read a Poem

Source: How to Read a Poem

“An enlightened trust in the sovereignty of human reason can be every bit as magical as the exploits of Merlin, and a faith in our capacity for limitless self-improvement just as much a wide-eyed superstition as a faith in leprechauns.”

Humans Self Reason Bits Self Improvement Capacity Wide Improvement Enlightened Superstitions Sovereignty Limitless Exploits Scientism Human Reason Leprechaun

Author:Terry Eagleton

“You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism.”

People Talking Trouble Capitalism Capitalist Literary Theory

Author:Terry Eagleton

“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.”

Way Play Facts Literature Common Mistake Novel Students Accounts Setting Settings Soil Erosion Nebraska Incidence Soil Erosion

Book:How to Read Literature

Source: How to Read Literature

“Ideology... is a kind of contemporary mythology, a realm which has purged itself of ambiguity and alternative possibility.”

Kind Possibility Mythology Contemporary Ideology Alternatives Realms Ambiguity

Book:Literary Theory: An Introduction

Source: Literary Theory: An Introduction

“What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology. One can understand well enough how human beings may struggle and murder for good material reasons - reasons connected, for instance, with their physical survival. It is much harder to grasp how they may come to do so in the name of something as apparently abstract as ideas. Yet ideas are what men and women live by, and will occasionally die for.”

Men Humans Wells May Ideas Reason Enough Dies Names Human Beings Mistake Struggle Materials Survival Men And Women Harder Murder Connected Instance Ideology Abstract Live By Vermin

Book:Ideology: An Introduction

Source: Ideology: An Introduction

“Yahweh is presented in the Jewish Bible as stateless and nationless. He can’t be used as a totem or fetish in that way.”

Way Used Fetish Totems Yahweh

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Universities are no longer educational in any sense of the word that Rousseau would have recognised. Instead, they have become unabashed instruments of capital. Confronted with this squalid betrayal, one imagines he would have felt sick and oppressed.”

Felt Imagine Sick Instruments University Educational Betrayal Oppressed

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Deconstruction insists not that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.”

Truth Is Illusory Deconstruction

Author:Terry Eagleton

“God chose what is weakest in the world to shame the strong.”

World Strong Shame

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.”

Feels Book Ideas Imagine Subjects Bird British Theology Biology Rough God Delusion

Author:Terry Eagleton

“The role of the intellectual, so it is said, is to speak truth to power. Noam Chomsky has dismissed this pious tag on two grounds. For one thing, power knows the truth already; it is just busy trying to conceal it. For another, it is not those in power who need the truth, but those they oppress.”

Knows Needs Trying Said Two Speak Roles One Thing Intellectual Busy Speak The Truth Pious Tag

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Anyone can be tolerant of those who are tolerant.”

Author:Terry Eagleton

“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.”

“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.”

Evil Train Giants Crowded

Author:Terry Eagleton

“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.”

Has Beens War States Problem Sides Deals Enemy Effects Crisis Terror Liberalism Legislation War On Terror Side Effects Anti Liberal

Author:Terry Eagleton

“There is no way in which we can retrospectively erase the Treaty of Vienna or the Great Irish Famine. It is a peculiar feature of human actions that, once performed, they can never be recuperated. What is true of the past will always be true of it.”

Way Humans Action Past Being True Features Peculiar Erase Famine Treaties Vienna Human Actions Great Irish

Author:Terry Eagleton

“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.”

Humans Christian Human Beings Party Moral Practice Virtue Saint Brilliant Spheres Virtuous Bores Being Human Trombone Maradona

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Americans use the word "dream" as often as psychoanalysts do.”

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Evil is often supposed to be without rhyme or reason.”

Reason Evil Supposed To Be Rhyme

Book:On Evil

Source: On Evil

“For Aristotle, goodness is a kind of prospering in the precarious affair of being human.”

Humans Kind Goodness Affair Being Human Precarious Prospering

Author:Terry Eagleton

“I attacked Dawkins's book on God because I think he is theologically illiterate.”

Thinking Book Illiterate

Author:Terry Eagleton

“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.”

Mean Courses Enjoy Virtue Obvious Living Fully

Author:Terry Eagleton

“I value my Catholic background very much. It taught me not to be afraid of rigorous thought, for one thing.”

Values One Thing Taught Catholic Backgrounds

Author:Terry Eagleton

“It is true that too much belief can be bad for your health.”

Belief Too Much

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Language, identity and forms of life are the terms in which political demands are shaped and voiced.”

Form Political Language Term Identity Demand

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Like the rest of us, Tom Paulin is a bundle of contradictions. At its finest, his work is brave, adventurous, original and wonderfully idiosyncratic.”

Originals Brave Contradiction Toms Finest Adventurous Bundles

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Most poetry in the modern age has retreated to the private sphere, turning its back on the political realm.”

Age Political Modern Realms Spheres Modern Age

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Nothing in human life is inherently private.”

Humans Life Is Human Life

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Postmodernism is among other things a sick joke at the expense of... revolutionary avant-gardism.”

Jokes Sick Revolutionary Expenses Modernism Postmodernism Postmodern Post Modernism

Author:Terry Eagleton

“The frontier between public and private shifts from time to time and culture to culture.”

Culture Frontiers

Author:Terry Eagleton

“The past can be used to renew the present, not just to bury it.”

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Today, nostalgia is almost as unacceptable as racism.”

Today Racism Nostalgia

Author:Terry Eagleton

“If history, philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research institute. But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and it would be deceptive to call it one.”

Ifs May Philosophy Would Be Term Training Research University Corporate Academic Facility Institute Deceptive Academic Life Technical Training

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Men and women do not easily submit to a power that does not weave itself into the texture of their daily existence - one reason why culture remains so politically vital. Civilisation cannot get on with culture, and it cannot get on without it.”

Men Doe Reason Culture Existence Men And Women Remains Reason Why Submit Texture Civilisation

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Rousseau ranks among the great educational theorists of the modern era, even if he was the last man to put in charge of a classroom. Young adults, he thought, should be allowed to develop their capabilities in their distinctive way.”

Ifs Men Way Should Lasts Young Modern Adults Young Adult Educational Eras Capability Classroom Distinctive Theorists Great Educational Modern Era

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Works of art cannot save us. They can simply render us more sensitive to what needs to be repaired.”

Needs Art Sensitive Works Of Art

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur Thou still unravished bride of quietness, then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary.”

Ifs Stills Book Literature Language Speech Approach Ordinary Everyday Bus Brides Quietness Deviate Bus Stops

Book:Literary Theory: An Introduction

Source: Literary Theory: An Introduction

“All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly deconstructive. For if the complex can be put into the simple, then it cannot be as complex as it seemed in the first place; and if the simple can be an adequate medium of such complexity, then it cannot after all be as simple as all that.”

Ifs Firsts Moving Simple Complexes Mediums Propaganda Complexity Adequate Constructive

Author:Terry Eagleton

“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.”

Book Reading Space Reader Mark Mere Pens Flawed Positively Shameful Enabling Repressed Derivatives Antithesis

Author:Terry Eagleton

“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.”

Ifs Ends Life Is Turns Individual Wealth Responsibility Media Property Driven Private Life Private Property Spectacles

Author:Terry Eagleton

“People do evil things because they are evil. Some people are evil in the way that some things are coloured indigo. They commit their evil deeds not to achieve some goal, but just because of the sort of people they are.”

People Way Evil Goal Achieve Deeds Commit Evil Things Indigo

Book:On Evil

Source: On Evil

“Those who sentimentally indulge humanity do it no favours.”

Humanity Favour Indulge

Author:Terry Eagleton

“What's wrong with a bit of nostalgia between friends? I think nostalgia sometimes gets too much of a bad press.”

Thinking Sometimes Bits Too Much Presses Nostalgia Bad Press

Author:Terry Eagleton

“You've got to have a sense of different audiences. I'm a kind of performer manque - I come from a long line of failed actors!”

Kind Long Different Actors Lines Audience Performers Long Lines

Author:Terry Eagleton

“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.”

Thinking Way Believe Culture Next Common Projects Fairness Godliness Common Culture

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Cynicism and naivety lie cheek by jowl in the American imagination; if the United States is one of the most venal nations on Earth, it is also one of the most earnestly idealistic.”

Ifs States Earth Lying Nations Imagination United United States Cynicism Cheeks Idealistic Naivety

Author:Terry Eagleton

About the Author

Born: February 22, 1943
Known for: Literary critic
Quotes: 169

Related Topics

Ifs Language Humans Literature Culture Capitalism Thinking Way Literary Theory Past

Popular Topics

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

Books & Sources

Literary Theory: An IntroductionRelated source material

Why Marx Was RightRelated source material

Ideology: An IntroductionRelated source material

On EvilRelated source material

Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God DebateRelated source material

How to Read LiteratureRelated source material

After TheoryRelated source material

Culture and the Death of GodRelated source material

Reason, Faith, & Revolution: Reflections on the God DebateRelated source material

The Meaning of LifeRelated source material

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