Discourse Quotes

“If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.”
― Leslie Lamport

“Every educational system is a political means of maintaining or of modifying the appropriation of discourse, with the knowledge and the powers it carries with it.”
― Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language

“We should strive to focus our lens on what connects us as humans as opposed to our differences. In doing so, not only can we challenge the Orientalist and colonial aspects of traditional photographic narratives, but we can also create a new visual legacy marked by equitable discourse.”
― Neeta Satam

“At the end of reasons comes persuasion.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“And talking about books as though something were at stake in a book. Not opening up a book to worship it or be elevated by it or to lose yourself to the world around you. No, boxing with the book.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“The Conscience is a thousand witnesses.”
― Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

“In order to dismantle such a discourse we must begin with the realization that desire is never “outside all social constraint.” Desire may be outside one set of constraints or another; but social constraints are what engender desire; and, one way or another, even at its most apparently catastrophic, they contour desire’s expression.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

“Berlin of 1884 was effected through the sword and the bullet. But the night of the sword and the bullet was followed by the morning of the chalk and the blackboard. The physical violence of the battlefield was followed by the psychological violence of the classroom. But where the former was visibly brutal, the latter was visibly gentle … The bullet was the means of physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation.”
― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

“A Strongman is a person who denies that he is a strongman just because he allows others to tell him so. This is the mere reflection of an arrogance which implies that he shows mercy to dissidence although he does not have to. Such an emphasis to mercy by a statesman is in fact a clear indication of a dictatorial mind.

Alıntı: Can Küçükali. “Me and the Strongman”. Apple Books.”
― Can Küçükali, Me and the Strongman

“[...] I am reminded of how difficult and time-consuming it is to reinvent the pencil every time you want to send a message.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“...if there be some points which correspondence can never settle, but which can be made clear by conversation in two minutes, at other times just the opposite is the case: an objection clearly stated in writing, a doubt well expressed, which elicits a direct and positive reply, helps things along more than ten hours of oral intercourse!”
― Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What Is Property?

“I would rather drift aimlessly on the turbulent stream of idle discourse than be even in the vicinity of nauseous, turbid effluent of ideological disquisition.”
― R. N. Prasher

“...You, my friend, are society. So welcome to the club of community, and even though some may try to drown out other styles of discourse with shouts about personal rights, the community may have a thing or two to say, and it may say it a lot louder. After all, community can only progress when its individuals exercise higher moral choices, and community is sacrificed when individuals choose with only themselves in mind.”
― Joni Eareckson Tada, When Is It Right to Die?: A Comforting and Surprising Look at Death and Dying

“It was very learned, but it didn't actually say anything.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“Designed for instant impact and encouraging feelings of omnipotence, Twitter is the perfect tool for an impulsive, attention-addicted strongman.”
― Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

“One of the recurring themes in the history of colonial repression is the way in which the threat of real or imagined violence towards white women became a symbol [of] insubordination and [of a] valuable property that needed to be protected from the ever-encroaching black man at all costs.

The question of European women's "sexual fear" appears to arise in special circumstances of unequal power structures at times of particular political pressure − when the dominant power group perceives itself as threatened and vulnerable. Protecting the virtue of white women was the pretext for instituting draconian measures against indigenous populations.

Contemporary records reveal that this was happening [during] a period of social and political uncertainty, and that the actual level of rape and sexual assault bore no relation to the hysteria that the subject aroused.”
― Vron Ware, Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism, and History

“The important thing here, I believe, is that truth isn’t outside power or lacking in power: contrary to a myth whose history and functions would repay further study, truth isn’t the
reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the
privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves.
Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of
multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of
power. Each society has its regime of truth, its “general politics” of truth—that is, the types of discourse it accepts and
makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances that enable one to distinguish true and false statements; the means by
which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who
are charged with saying what counts as true.”
― Foucault, Michel

“Ordinary conversations between persons who confront each other are good only when they are carried on civilly. We are not thinking merely of civilities according to conventions of social politeness. Such conventions are not really important. What is important is that there is an intellectual etiquette to be observed. Without it, conversation is bickering rather than profitable communication. We are assuming here, of course, that the conversation is about a serious matter on which men can agree or disagree. Then it becomes important that they conduct themselves well. Otherwise, there is no profit in the enterprise. The profit in good conversation is something learned.”
― Mortimer Adler How to read a book

“Beautiful discourse is rarer than an emerald, yet it can be found among the slave girls at the grindstone.”
― Egyptian proverb

“La vie n'est pas un monologue théâtral.
Les grands discours ne mènent nulle part, c'est juste un act s'ils ne conduisent pas
pas à pas,
à commencer à agir,
s'il n'y a aucune action dessus.
Ne confondez pas être solidaire et solitaire.”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, L'ABC du bonheur et bonne humeur: Conseils pour une vie pleine de joie et briser les barrières qui vous séparent d'obtenir ce travail si rêvé

“The magnificent beauty of an unreal discourse does not add any reality to that discourse! A false discourse is a false discourse no matter how masterfully and how powerfully it has been said!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“La leçon qui veut donner Xénophon en montrant Simonide en train d'écouter en silence le long discourse de Hiéron, puis en lui répondant, peut être exprimée maintenant de la façon suivante: même un homme parfaitement juste qui veut donner des conseils à un tyran doit se présenter comme un homme dénué de tous scrupules. Le plus grand homme qui ait jamais imité le Hiéron fut Machiavel. Je ne serais pas surpris si une étude suffisamment attentive de l'œuvre de Machiavel conduisait à la conclusion que c'est précisément le fait que Machiavel a parfaitement compris la principale leçon pédagogique de Xénophon qui explique les phrases les plus choquantes du Prince. Mais si Machiavel a compris la leçon de Xénophon, il ne l'a certainement pas appliquée dans l'esprit de son auteur. Car, d'après Xénophon, le conseiller du tyran doit apparaître comme un homme dénué de tous scrupules, non parce qu'il déclare ne craindre ni l'enfer ni le diable ou qu'il professe des principes immoraux, mais du simple fait qu'il s'abstient de tenir compte des principes moraux. Il doit manifester son affranchissement réel ou supposé à cet égard, non par le discours, mais par le silence car, en procédant ainsi - en méprisant la morale par l'action plutôt qu'en l'attaquant par le discours, il révèle en même temps sa compréhension des choses politiques. Xénophon, ou son Simonide, est plus politique que Machiavel; il refuse de séparer la modération (ou la prudence) de la sagesse (ou perspicacité).”
― Leo Strauss, On Tyranny

“The number 2 is a very dangerous number: that is why the dialectic is a dangerous process”
― C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures

“What race subjects should our students be engaging? Which stories should be told? Which histories examined? Considering this book's chief assertion--there is a difference between 'light' and 'fire,' between empty and meaningful--how do teachers pick the proper fuel for their students' race discourse?”
― Matthew R. Kay, Not Light, but Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom

“A metaphor then, we might reasonably surmise, is not necessarily a matter of simple one-to-one equivalences (‘this stands for that’), but neither is it a process of ornamentation of something that could have been more clearly said in another, simpler way; rather, in this case at least […] it is the very substance of the discourse.”
― David Punter, Metaphor

“The focus on lived experience by identity groups valorizes inner selves experienced emotionally rather than examined rationally. Notes one observer, “Our political culture is marked, at the micro level, by the fusion of a given person’s opinion and what they perceive to be their singular, permanent, and authentic self.” This privileges opinions sincerely held over reasoned deliberation that may force one to abandon those opinions. That an argument is offensive to someone’s sense of self-worth is often seen as sufficient to delegitimize it, a trend encouraged by the kind of short-form discourse propagated by social media.”
― Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment

“A surprising number of people believe that other people can hurt their feelings.”
― Vincent P. Collins, Acceptance

“Lost in the incessant focus on the darker sides of free speech—real, perceived, and exaggerated—are the profound benefits of free and open discourse, from the toppling of absolutist rulers to the cross-fertilization of knowledge across cultures and the defeat of institutional racism and discrimination. As thinkers like Spinoza, Cato, Madison, Constant, and Douglass have pointed out, we jeopardize those benefits if we are unwilling to accept any of the harms or costs that inevitably accompany free expression.”
― Jacob Mchangama, Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media

“the anti-political correctness types are really just trying to enforce their own standards of acceptable discourse and are furious at their inability to do so

(6/5/2020 on Twitter)”
― Adam Serwer

“The discourse around the practice of dowry intertwined the individual rights of women within the paradox of patrilocality, a woman’s traditional position and role with her natal and matrimonial family, and the privileged position of men within the institution of marriage. Women are being considered as the `valiant keepers of the tradition’ of marriage, how violent it is, rather than as humans or citizens endowed with political rights. The discourse also ignored the tensions between women as individuals, as citizens, and women as daughters, wives, and daughters-in-law. Upholding patriarchy and not women’s emancipation remains the goal of such socio-legal debate.”
― Shalu Nigam