Terry Eagleton
Terry Eagleton
Terence Francis "Terry" Eagleton FBA is a prominent British literary theorist, critic and public intellectual. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionCritic
Date of Birth22 February 1943
Terry Eagleton quotes about
books-and-reading derivative enabling flawed lack less longer mark mere pen positively readers repressed secondary seen shameful status within writer
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.
constitute core humanities men study university values worth
Real men study law and engineering, while ideas and values are for sissies. The humanities should constitute the core of any university worth the name.
literary-theory apathy inevitable
After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.
goal people evil
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.
truth-is deconstruction illusory
Deconstruction insists not that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.
jesus pain justice
The New Testament is a brutal destroyer of human illusions. If you follow Jesus and don't end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do. The stark signifier of the human condition is one who spoke up for love and justice and was done to death for his pains. The traumatic truth of human history is a mutilated body.
two intellectual trying
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.
interesting language schizophrenic
Schizophrenic language has in this sense an interesting resemblance to poetry.
successful revolution ends
Successful revolutions are those which end up by erasing all traces of themselves.
democracy socialism negation
Socialism is the completion of democracy, not the negation of it.
night understanding owl
Understanding is always in some sense retrospective, which is what Hegel meant by remarking that the owl of Minerva flies only at night.
brave finest adventurous
Like the rest of us, Tom Paulin is a bundle of contradictions. At its finest, his work is brave, adventurous, original and wonderfully idiosyncratic.
cat night black
In the deep night of metaphysics, all cats look black.
spring desire strive
All desire springs from a lack, which it strives continually to fill.