Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead. — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
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… — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
We in universities are not in the democracy business. What we do, when we're doing it, is teach and learn. — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
“My God, my God, thou art a direct God, may I not say a literal God, a God that wouldst be understood literally and… — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of… — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
“Justification, after all, confers value on an activity from a perspective outside its performance. An activity that cannot be justified is an activity that… — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
Belief and knowledge are considered to be two different things. But they are not. — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
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… — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
Know what makes a sentence more than a random list, practice constructing sentences and explaining what you have done, and you will know how… — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
I do not support abortion rights. Although what I would support in this vexed area is not clear to me. — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
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… — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
People write or speak sentences in order to produce an effect, and the success of a sentence is measured by the degree to which… — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
Many people on the political left found my work psychologically liberating. They began to say: once you realize that standards emerge historically, then you… — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
“In his great book How to Do Things with Words (1962), J.L. Austin considers the apparently simple sentence "France is hexagonal." He asks if… — Stanley Fish Copy Share Image
