Terry Eagleton Thinking Quotations

A truly common culture is not one in which we all think alike, or in which we all believe that fairness is next to godliness, but one in which everyone is allowed to be in on the project of cooperatively shaping a common way of life.

What's wrong with a bit of nostalgia between friends? I think nostalgia sometimes gets too much of a bad press.

I enjoy popularisation and I think I'm reasonably good at it. I also think it's a duty. It's just so pedagogically stupid to forget how difficult one found these ideas oneself to begin with.

I attacked Dawkins's book on God because I think he is theologically illiterate.

I liked early Amis a lot, but I stopped reading him some time ago. I admire Hitchens on literary topics - I think he is very astute. McEwan, I read a bit. But I suppose it's more the ideological phenomenon that they represent together that interests me.

All consciousness is consciousness of something: in thinking I am aware that my thought is 'pointing towards' some object.

It is difficult to think of an origin without wanting to go back beyond it.

Being brought up in a culture is a matter of learning appropriate forms of feeling as much as particular ways of thinking.

The Kantian imperative to have the courage to think for oneself has involved a contemptuous disregard for the resources of tradition and an infantile view of authority as inherently oppressive.