From the viewpoint of political power, culture is absolutely vital. So vital, indeed, that power cannot operate without it. It is culture, in the sense of the everyday habits and beliefs of a people, which beds power down, makes it… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
The present is only understandable through the past, with which it forms a living continuity; and the past is always grasped from our own partial viewpoint within the present. — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur Thou still unravished… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
The study of history and philosophy, accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for lawyers and engineers as well as for… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
To claim that science and religion pose different questions to the world is not to suggest that if the bones of Jesus were discovered… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Virtue is something you have to get good at, like playing the trombone or tolerating bores at parties. Being a virtuous human being takes… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly not constructive. For if the… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Reading is not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair: our initial speculations generate a frame of reference within which to interpret what… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“What it means to be a ‘better person’, then, must be concrete and practical — that is to say, concerned with people’s political situations… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“What we consume now is not objects or events, but our experience of them. Just as we never need to leave our cars, so… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“The theatre can teach us some truth, but it is the truth of the illusory nature of our existence. It can alert us to… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
