“Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead. The shaping power of language cannot be avoided. We cannot choose to distance ourselves from it. We can n… — 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 according to the plain sense of all thou sayest, but thou art also (Lord, I intend it to thy glory, and let no profane misinterpreter abuse it to thy dimunition), thou art a figurative, a metaphorical… — Stanley Fish Copy Share
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 refuses to regard itself as instrumental to some larger good. The humanities are their own good. There is nothing more to say, and anything that is said – even when it takes the form of Kronman’s… — Stanley Fish Copy Share
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
