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Public Discourse Quotes

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Public Discourse Quotes

“I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville.”

PhilosophyCultureTelevisionCommunicationIdeologyEpistemologyPublic Discourse
Book:Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
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“The television commercial has mounted the most serious assault on capitalist ideology since the publication of Das Kapital. To understand why, we must remind ourselves that capitalism, like science and liberal democracy, was an outgrowth of the Enlightenment. Its principal theorists, even its most prosperous practitioners, believed capitalism to be based on the idea that both buyer and seller are sufficiently mature, well informed and reasonable to engage in transactions of mutual self-interest. If greed was taken to be the fuel of the capitalist engine, the surely rationality was the driver. The theory states, in part, that competition in the marketplace requires that the buyer not only knows what is good for him but also what is good. If the seller produces nothing of value, as determined by a rational marketplace, then he loses out. It is the assumption of rationality among buyers that spurs competitors to become winners, and winners to keep on winning. Where it is assumed that a buyer is unable to make rational decisions, laws are passed to invalidate transactions, as, for example, those which prohibit children from making contracts...Of course, the practice of capitalism has its contradictions...But television commercials make hash of it...By substituting images for claims, the pictorial commercial made emotional appeal, not tests of truth, the basis of consumer decisions. The distance between rationality and advertising is now so wide that it is difficult to remember that there once existed a connection between them. Today, on television commercials, propositions are as scarce as unattractive people. The truth or falsity of an advertiser's claim is simply not an issue. A McDonald's commercial, for example, is not a series of testable, logically ordered assertions. It is a drama--a mythology, if you will--of handsome people selling, buying and eating hamburgers, and being driven to near ecstasy by their good fortune. No claim are made, except those the viewer projects onto or infers from the drama. One can like or dislike a television commercial, of course. But one cannot refute it.”

TelevisionDramaLogicAdvertisingMcdonaldsIdiocyPublic DiscourseTelevision CommercialsEmotional AppealCommercialsFalsities
Book:Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
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“Reaching out to individuals of different ideological persuasions and starting a dialogue with them demanded then (and still requires today) a particular form of courage and fortitude that not everyone has. It also presupposes a particular style of discourse that avoids making reproaches and tirades against alleged 'scoundrels' and traitors with whom no dialogue is conceivable. 'I learned to respect other people's ideas,' [Norberto] Bobbio confessed, 'to pause before the secret of every conscience, to understand before arguing, and to argue before condemning.' He had always been a person 'more interested in dialogue than conflict' and loathed extremist or intransigent positions on all sides.”

PoliticsDebateDialogueOpennessOpen MindednessConversationsPublic DiscourseTalking About Politics
Book:Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes
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“Demagoguery is about identity. It says that complicated policy issues can be reduced to a binary of us (good) versus them (bad). It says that good people recognize there is a bad situation, and bad people don't; therefore, to determine what policy agenda is the best, it says we should think entirely in terms of who is like us and who isn't. In American politics, it becomes Republican versus Democrat or 'conservative' versus 'liberal.' That polarized and factionalized way of approaching public discourse virtually guarantees demagogues, on all sorts of issues, and in all sorts of directions. Demagoguery is a serious problem, as it undermines the ability of a community to come to reasonable policy decisions and tends to promote or justify violence, but it's rarely the consequence of an individual who magically transports a culture into a different world. Demagoguery isn't about what politicians do; it's about how we, as citizens, argue, reason, and vote. Therefore, reducing how much our culture relies on demagoguery is our problem, and up to us to solve.”

PoliticsDemocracyArgumentFascismRhetoricAuthoritarianismPublic PolicyDemagogueryPublic DiscoursePolitical Discourse
Book:Demagoguery and Democracy
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“[Author's Note:] It took me four years to research and write this novel, so I began long before talk about migrant caravans and building a wall entered the national zeitgeist. But even then I was frustrated by the tenor of the public discourse surrounding immigration in this country. The conversation always seemed to turn around policy issues, to the absolute exclusion of moral or humanitarian concerns. I was appalled at the way Latino migrants, even five years ago - and it has gotten exponentially worse since then - were characterized within that public discourse. At worst, we perceive them as an invading mob of resource-draining criminals, and at best, a sort of helpless, impoverished, faceless brown mass, clamoring for help at our doorstep. We seldom think of them as our fellow human beings. People with the agency to make their own decisions, people who can contribute to their own bright futures, and to ours, as so many generations of oft-reviled immigrants have done before them.”

PoliticsImmigrationStereotypesMigrantsHumanitarian EffortsPublic DiscourseGeneralizationsU S PoliticsHumanizing
Book:American Dirt
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“The most pressing environmental problem we face today is not climate change. Rather it is pollution in the public square, where a smog of adversarial rhetoric, propaganda and polarization stifles discussion and debate, creating resistance to change and thwarting our ability to solve our collective problems.”

Climate ChangePollutionBiasCivilityPublic DiscourseToxic CulturePublic DebatePublic Square
Book:I'm Right and You're an Idiot - 2nd Edition: The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean it Up
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“Scholars may contribute their knowledge or insight to public debate on important issues. They may contribute it in a form that is understandable to a policymaker, or even to the public, consistently with their duty of rigorous intellectual honesty. Scholars should not feel constrained to publish only turgid prose in obscure journals. They should not leave the public debate to those who feel no scruples whatever to conform their claims to the evidence.”

ScholarshipPublic DiscoursePublic Discussion
Book:Religious Liberty, Vol. 1: Overviews and History
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“The good news is you can get a lot of information off the Internet for free and in a hurry. But I think the breaking up of the media, which is otherwise kind of healthy, has contributed to less actual reporting and a louder, more contentious, more divisive public discourse, highlighting conflict, sometimes falsely.”

ThinkingKindSometimesMediaInformationInternetHealthyConflictNewsDiscourseGood NewsPublic DiscourseContentiousHighlighting
Author:William J. Clinton
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“The left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition. The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian. It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences from social ostracism to vocational defenestration upon those who refuse to be silenced.”

TryingCertainWinningLeftSocialAttitudeSeriousConsequenceRefuseDebateOppositionPhasesDiscourseStoppingEnteringControversyIdeologicalAgitationPublic DiscourseOstracismSocial Ostracism
Author:Charles Krauthammer
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“Have you ever noticed that the only metaphor we have in our public discourse for solving problems is to declare war on it? We have the war on crime, the war on cancer, the war on drugs. But did you ever notice that we have no war on homelessness? You know why? Because there's no money in that problem. No money to be made off of the homeless. If you can find a solution to homelessness where the corporations and politicians can make a few million dollars each, you will see the streets of America begin to clear up pretty damn quick!”

IfsKnowsMadeWarProblemAmericaMillionsClearStreetsCrimePoliticianDrugSolutionsDollarsMetaphorCancerCorporationsDamnProblem SolvingHomelessDiscourseHomelessnessMillion DollarsNo MoneyWar On DrugsNo WarPublic Discourse
Author:George Carlin
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“The world of public discourse - political, social, diplomatic, commercial - has so corrupted language that we are rightly more suspicious of the meaning of words than we are convinced of their veracity. Language has been turned on its head.”

WorldHas BeensPoliticalLanguageSocialConvincedDiscourseSuspiciousDiplomaticVeracityPublic DiscourseMeanings Of Words
Book:Writing for Your Life: Discovering the Story of Your Life's Jou
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“If conservatives come to control the White House and both Houses of Congress, there will be very little change in Hollywood, the network evening news, universities, church bureaucracies, the New York Times, or the Washington Post. Institutions that are overwhelmingly left-liberal will continue to misinform the public and distort public discourse.”

IfsLittlesChristianHouseLeftChurchReligiousWhiteNew YorkNewsHollywoodInstitutionsUniversityCongressEveningPostsWhite HouseDiscourseBureaucracyNew York TimesPublic Discourse
Author:Robert Bork
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“Proponents of so-called pluralism feel compelled to ban religious considerations from public discourse because they know, instinctively if not intellectually, that their faith is in direct conflict with the God of the Bible, and that in the end the two positions are irreconcilable.”

IfsKnowsFeelsTwoEndsChristianReligiousPositionConflictDirectConsiderationDiscourseCompelledBansPluralismPublic Discourse
Book:Faith & Freedom: The Christian Roots of American Liberty
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“Jay-Z's a guy that wears the Che Guevara t-shirt and he doesn't realize Che Guevara was a racist. Che Guevara was a murderer and a killer. So look, he's an entertainer, obviously. He's not in the middle of any public discourse here. But I think it's important to point out when people take stances like this that are absurd.”

PeopleThinkingLooksImportantGuyRealizingMiddleAbsurdShirtsRacistKillersDiscourseMurdererT ShirtEntertainersStancePublic Discourse
Author:Marco Rubio
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“One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the twenty-first century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns-about ethics, spiritual experience, and the inevitability of human suffering-in ways that are not flagrantly irrational. We desperately need a public discourse that encourages critical thinking and intellectual honesty. Nothing stands in the way of this project more that the respect we accord religious faith.”

ThinkingWayNeedsFirstsHumansSpiritualSufferingSpiritualitySpeakChallengesReligiousHuman BeingsCenturyHonestyCivilizationProjectsIntellectualEthicsConcernTwentiesCriticalIrrationalDiscourseReligious FaithAccordCritical ThinkingInevitabilitySpiritual ExperienceHuman SufferingPublic DiscourseIntellectual Honesty
Book:Letter to a Christian Nation
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“That is another theme in the book [Dreams from My Father]. How do we exercise more empathy in our public discourse? How do we get the black to see through the eyes of the white? Or the citizen to see through the eyes of the immigrant? Or the straight to see through the eyes of the gay? That has always been a struggle in our politics.”

BookDreamEyeFatherBlackWhiteStruggleCitizensExerciseGayEmpathyThemeImmigrantsDiscourseThrough The EyesPublic DiscourseDreams From My Father
Author:Barack Obama
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“In a democratic society, as Max Weber said, what is possible is only possible because some people have demanded the impossible. The abolitionists helped to create a public discourse in which men like Lincoln become possible. That doesn't mean Lincoln is an abolitionist. It means there is a public opinion out there which is being influenced by antislavery sentiment.”

PeopleMenMeanSaidOpinionImpossibleDemocraticSentimentsDiscoursePublic OpinionMaxDemocratic SocietyAbolitionistPublic DiscourseWeber
Author:Eric Foner
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“The public discourse on global warming has little in common with the standards of scientific discourse. Rather, it is part of political discourse where comments are made to secure the political base and frighten the opposition rather than to illuminate issues. In political discourse, information is to be 'spun' to reinforce pre-existing beliefs, and to discourage opposition.”

LittlesMadePoliticalBeliefCommonIssuesInformationStandardsClimate ChangeSecureGlobal WarmingOppositionCommentDiscourseDiscouragingSpunPublic DiscoursePolitical Discourse
Author:Richard Lindzen
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“The need for civility in society has never been more important. The foundation of kindness and civility begins in our homes. It is not surprising that our public discourse has declined in equal measure with the breakdown of the family. The family is the foundation for love and for maintaining spirituality. The family promotes an atmosphere where religious observance can flourish. There is indeed beauty all around when there's love at home.”

NeedsImportantHomeSpiritualityReligiousKindnessEqualFoundationAtmosphereSurprisingDiscourseMaintainingCivilityBreakdownObservancePublic Discourse
Author:Quentin L. Cook
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“Charles Bernstein's pairs of jingles of 'public discourse' are 'simultaneous double narrative / the space between's the other narrative/as if they're opposite.' In the space between, outside representation but in the 'presence' of it, we are provoked to laugh. Bernstein alters our language to open a double range that's public and mind at once and inseparable, that is 'Poetry is patterned thought in search of unpatterned mind.' Girly Man is doing it.”

IfsMenMindLanguageSpaceLaughingOppositesNarrativeRangePairsPoetry IsRepresentationDiscourseInseparableSpace BetweenGirlyProvokedSimultaneousPublic DiscourseJingles
Author:Leslie Scalapino
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