Top 120 Discourse Quotes

It is the province of poetry to be more realistic and present than the artificial narratives of an outer discourse, and not afraid of the truthful difficulty of the average human life.

Wishing to open my mouth, O brethren, and speak on the exalted theme of humility, I am filled with fear, even as a man who understands that he is about to discourse concerning God with the art of his own words. For humility is the raiment of the Godhead.

We can no more tolerate neutrality and benevolence toward every conceivable form of discourse, including that of magical thinking, than we can lump together executioner and victim, good and evil.

The one thing that is distinctive about America historically has been the fact that we are all able to engage in public discourse without the political becoming personal.

Change of weather is the discourse of fools.

In America, we don’t, in daily discourse, use the words ‘capitalism‘ or ‘socialism.’ They’ve been kind of nonexistent words, I would say, amongst the general public.

Politics isn’t something that really interested me; I, of course, care about what’s going on in the world, but so much of political discourse now is not necessarily about doing what’s right.

The discourse of sovereignty is a relative one when a crisis has become a global crisis.

But one did not do feminist theory, as such, in those days, not only because male academic discourse did not recognize such a term, but especially because the women‘s movement did not either.

The Chinese government has been clear in its goal and purpose for creating and expanding Confucius Institutes throughout the country, namely to distort academic discourse on China, threaten and silence defenders of human rights, and create a climate intolerant of dissent or open discussion.

So much of western self-perception and intellectual worldview has been shaped by the moral rhetoric of the Cold War, the discourse in which communism featured as a clear enemy, determined to rule the world.

Not only our political system is broken, but how we do business and have public discourse with one another. The system in Hollywood, specifically, is not depicting people of color; we’re not even talking about Asian Americans or Latino Americans; we’re not even getting into that question.

A government of, by, and for the people requires that people talk to people, that we can agree to disagree but do so in civility. If we let the politicians and those who report dictate our discourse, then our course will be dictated.

Discourse is fleeting, but junk mail is forever.

India believes that the world is a family, and the best means of resolution is shared discourse. A family is shaped by love and is not transactional; a family is nurtured by consideration, not greed; a family believes in harmony not jealousy.

Informed opponents of Obama‘s healthcare initiative have expressed dismay at the low level of discourse.

I’ve become very interested in the spectrum of political discourse as seen on the cable news channels that are conveniently right in a row on my cable provider‘s dial. I can flip from Fox to CNN to HLN to MSNBC, and I find myself at night flipping it back and forth through them, and it’s something of an addiction.

We must protect the very things that make America so special – most certainly including our civil liberties. But we cannot do so without strong national security and a thoughtful and informed discourse.

Actual human discourse happens within a number of contexts, not in some sort of unified public forum.

On the other side, I do believe that the rhetoric we are seeing from the Democrats today is unprecedented, is a new low in presidential politics and goes beyond political discourse and amounts to political hate speech.

It is hard to know what you are talking about in mathematics, yet no one questions the validity of what you say. There is no other realm of discourse half so queer.

What, after all, is the narrative of ‘the American Dream?’ It was a discourse formulated between the 1880s and the 1920s in the United States during the great waves of migration and expansion and reforms of the Progressive Era.

I’d like to see much more understanding of emotional issues around hurt, abandonment, disappointment, longing, failure and shame, where they stem from and how they drive people and policies brought into public discourse.

Almost anything is better than three network TV outlets completely controlling the national discourse with their nightly broadcasts. We’ve moved a long way from that, and that’s important.

It is important for us to be able to meet and greet the people that we serve. And if we start having police presence everywhere we go, it’s going to create a chilling effect on discourse, and it creates an incredible assault on the democratic process.

One culture I find fascinating to juxtapose against American culture is the culture of Germany. They’ve gone through a long process through their art, poetry, public discourse, their politics, of owning the fact of their complicity in what happened in World War II. It’s still a topic of everyday conversation in Germany.

I guess I understand a public intellectual to be somebody who moves public discourse forward: someone who either says something new or says something that everybody knows to be true but is afraid to express.

Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a total coherent system of these integrating with each other, and with behavior, context, universe of discourse, and observer perspective.

Human beings, in their present evolved state, have a limited capacity to digest, understand, and then properly and accurately disseminate events and information to other nodes of discourse.

I have and I will always work to promote a civil public discourse.

I became a victim of my own good work in ‘Buniyaad.’ It established my credentials as an actor but I became Babuji forever, the benevolent father figure with a perpetual smile, who has a discourse on sanskaar ready.

At least in the West, politicians, corporations and media moguls can no longer take for granted their power to control the public discourse – and have it go unchallenged.

There’s a certain kind of cultural energy pursued by the gatekeepers of elite discourse, who want to argue that Americans fundamentally agree with each other, and that’s the health of the nation.

Our country’s political discourse and debate are enriched by discussions of the political implications of our faith traditions, whether they are taking place in our communities, at our dinner tables, or in our places of worship.

But ultimately what I was impressed by during my years in government was how much the intellectual climate and the prevailing intellectual notions constrained and represented the universe within which the discourse took place.

Political discourse has become so rotten that it’s no longer possible to tell the stench of one presidential candidate from the stink of another.

Where wise actions are the fruit of life, wise discourse is the pollination.

Fancy your having no sunshine in London yesterday! Here it was glorious, like full summer, and I sat up with the window wide open, listening to the discourse of two amorous thrushes.

The poet’s spoken discourse often depends on a mystique, on the spiritual freedom that finds itself enslaved on earth.

As I say, I’m a discourse advocate. What form it comes is less important to me than the fact that there is discourse.

My grandparents would have big, long arguments that were entertaining and that’s where I first noticed, and was thrilled by, political discourse.

I think Britain is a little better at bringing intellectuals into discourse than America, where I’m from. Though I would say, perhaps, that the U.K. prefers its intellectualism to be entertaining.

There is no civil discourse left and it is really sad.

The best thing we can do when we want to elevate civil dialogue in our American political discourse is to do whatever we can to make sure we treat others kindly with dignity and respect, and that’s what I intend to do.

Bad faith likes discourse on friendship and loyalty.

I believe in poetic discourse, in the value of speech in a non-naturalistic way; it’s speculative.

The focus of our public discourse has been on how American companies are competing with Japanese, German, and other foreign companies. What this allows us to ignore is how each of those American companies is really in competition with the families of the workers. That’s the real competition.

I get the feeling that people from outside the world of contemporary art see it as deserving of mockery, in an emperor‘s-new-clothes sort of way. I think that’s not right and that it’s just because they don’t understand the discourse. The art world is filled with vibrancy.

I get the feeling that people from outside the world of contemporary art see it as deserving of mockery, in an emperor’s-new-clothes sort of way. I think that’s not right and that it’s just because they don’t understand the discourse.

The level of discourse in this country is falling to a depth that cannot be sustained.

My mother was Irish; she had this great sense of humor, and both my parents loved films. There was a very vibrant discourse about politics and everything that was going on in the world where I grew up. So I was genetically predisposed to go into the performing arts.

I’m going into politics because I think that the kind of discourse taking place in Israel is leading this country to oblivion, and I want to change it.

Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!

Make no mistake about it: Law school is not a bastion of intellectual discourse.

Public discourse about climate change has resulted in the erroneous idea that it’s all about cost, burden and sacrifice. If the math was correct, everyone would see it’s about profit, jobs and competitive advantage.

Healthy debate has been replaced by automatic sensors that eliminate the need for actual talking during a filibuster – a la ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.’ Robust debate is necessary in a democratic society. Instead, our discourse has been relegated to media spin by expert entertainers.

With sociolinguistics, after covering the basics of the field, I focused on discourse analysis.

Civilized discourse demands critical thinking, self-reflexiveness, sober-headed analysis.

The Left doesn’t understand the importance of God in the Israeli public discourse, and Yesh Atid does.

I proceed with the proper subject of this discourse; namely, the further changes in scientific belief, which have occurred within my own recollection, even since the time when I first aspired to authorship, now forty- five years ago.

The same practice was continued every evening through the whole course, and with the same success. Many individuals expressed their gratification at having discovered such simple means of relieving the tedium of a long discourse.

You often see in Washington those who disagree you described as stupid or evil. It’s one of the most unfortunate trends of modern political discourse. Portraying opponents as too dumb to know the truth but smart enough and wanting people to suffer.

When we put our trust in diplomacy, it is not because it is an inspiring or uplifting discourse or because it helps us see the common humanity in others. The stylized circumlocutions of diplomats can make them seem ridiculous or irrelevant: they never seem to be talking about what is really going on.

I speak for Kashmiri pundits because injustice has been done to them, and the political discourse doesn’t give them enough importance.

I am troubled that sometimes in our political discourse we spend all of our time focused on the challenges of the next century rather than on the opportunities of the new century.

I believe that we will elevate and differentiate the discourse of cinema the more we discuss image creation in specific terms.

Let your Discourse with Men of Business be Short and Comprehensive.

I have covered Israeli hostage and M.I.A. cases for more than 15 years, including the covert ways in which Israel’s powerful espionage agencies operate to bring soldiers home alive or dead. Over that time, the issue has come to dominate public discourse to a degree that no one could have predicted.

With Barack Obama as president and the super-happening Michelle Obama as First Lady, you would think a new tone, a new tune, a kicky new jazzitude, would have entered Washington discourse, but it remains a landlocked island unto itself, held captive by its tribal fevers.

I’m in the civil discourse business. I think it takes all kinds. And more power to everybody.

I find this in all these places I’ve been travelling – from India to China, to Japan and Europe and to Brazil – there is a frustration with the terms of public discourse, with a kind of absence of discussion of questions of justice and ethics and of values.

Preaching to the choir actually arms the choir with arguments and elevates the choir’s discourse. There’s a reason the right does it and does it well and triumphs.

Politicians should aim for higher discourse, the media should report context instead of seeking to inflame the public, and the public should not reward bad behavior nor engage in it on social media.

As a country, we still have a lot of work to do. We need to agree on some basic rules for civil discourse.

We forgot that Martin Luther King, Jr. changed his discourse toward the end of his life because he understood that the real fundamental problem of this country was not just race, it was class. It was the economical situation of not only poor blacks but also the poor white part of the population and everything in between.

There are trends in our societies… that can lead to some political decisions in America and in Europe that can give some ground to the radicalization discourse.

It’s good to have a free space to laugh and cry and get angry about gender and sexuality. That’s one of the things I am the most thankful for from my friends and my family. They’ve given me the place to freely have gender be a part of our discourse.

The more one reads poetry, the less tolerant one becomes of any sort of verbosity, be that in political or philosophical discourse, be that in history, social studies or the art of fiction.

One way that whites protect their positions when challenged on race is to invoke the discourse of self-defense. Through this discourse, whites characterize themselves as victimized, slammed, blamed, and attacked.

There was absolutely zero discourse between me or anybody at the studio with the NFL. None. The only exchange was one-sentence e-mails trying to arrange a meeting, before deciding to cancel the meeting. Period. End of story.

I haven‘t studied history – I couldn’t give a discourse in medieval literature – but I am a personal historian, and I do a lot to take in the histories of the people around me.

A truly great university is a nucleus of artistic expression. It fosters creative, critical thought, and serves as a platform for civil discourse.

The culture of rigorous questioning and open discourse at the University of Chicago has opened minds to ideas that have changed the world.

Civility is not not saying negative or harsh things. It is not the absence of critical analysis. It is the manner in which we are sharing this territorial freedom of political discussion. If our discourse is yelled and screamed and interrupted and patronized, that’s uncivil.

White writers in many cases choose not to populate their fiction with people of color. A lot of what I’m doing is trying to write against that, not about race but against the avoidance of race that’s such a dominant model in white literary discourse.

When Gingrich attacked CNN’s John King for bringing up his alleged proposal of an open marriage to his second wife, Gingrich accused him of lowering the level of discourse in a presidential debate, suggesting that such a discussion is unworthy of consideration by voters.

Dysfunction in Washington has stalled any meaningful federal action on gun control. So it’s increasingly up to big cities like New York to take bold steps to get weapons off our streets and change the national discourse.

Two truths are all too often overshadowed in today’s political discourse: Public service is a most honorable pursuit, and so is bipartisanship.

Scientific knowledge is a kind of discourse.

It’s a classic error in American discourse: the conflation of race with culture.

In the descent from a world of factual discourse into a world of emotions and alternative realities, the first step you take, whether you’re the Russian media, whether you’re Breitbart, is that you manufacture lots of stuff that isn’t true. The second step is that you claim that everyone is like this.

One of the big changes in politics has been because families, individuals, have felt worried, insecure… worried about the economy, worried about their jobs, worried about their kids‘ futures… actually the disconnect between the public and media discourse and people’s everyday concerns has become bigger not smaller.

I have said it before and I will continue to say that I don’t think art is the most effective form of protest. I don’t think it changes policy; I think it changes discourse, and discourse can change ideas, and for me, that’s what it’s about: having that space for conversation.

There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse.

Fruitful discourse in science or theology requires us to believe that within the contexts of normal discourse there are some true statements.

There’s only one way we’re going to change our political climate and ensure we establish some respect in our discourse. And that is to show there is a real price to pay for being a disrespectful partisan idiot.

It’s very much the currency of discourse on social media where political disagreements very quickly become very personalised.

Since I became a knitting humor writer, I seem to be understood a little better – at least for the purposes of social discourse.

If bloggers are to improve our public discourse – helping busy and usually uninformed people make sense of the world – it is necessary to use some sort of standard with which to judge their reliability. Perhaps the answer (strictly advisory) is a body of their peers. Perhaps not.

A good discourse is that from which nothing can be retrenched without cutting into the quick.

When the only people in mainstream discourse who care about the working class are Wall Street investors, it really is time to ask where our politics went wrong.

A willingness by politicians to say what they think the public want to hear, and a willingness by large parts of the public to believe what they are told by populist politicians, has led to a deterioration in our public discourse.

You have to learn to have discourse with people you don’t necessarily agree with.

There’s public health risks to doing large political gatherings, but in this country – and we do still live in America – we protect the right to free speech and we protect the right to political discourse and political events.

In Israel, there is this reduction of the political discourse to something that is very limited. It’s as if you have that pitch that only dogs can hear. Sometimes I feel I speak at such a pitch that very few people around me communicate with what I’m saying.

Universities are not places where police can come and arrest people. Let the children have a discourse as they want to. They will learn as they move on in life. But to target individuals and institutions is dangerous.

Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse.

A lot of people who voted for Barack Obama expected and were led to expect something new in politics: a new tone of political discourse in Washington. And I think – I think they’re disappointed, because Barack Obama is not a new kind of politician. In fact, he’s an old Chicago politician.

I was a rebel. I never wanted to build. We thought of architecture as intellectually bankrupt and slightly corrupt, and I was always more interested in other forms of discourse.

Let me make the Workers’ Party‘s position clear: When we deal with public discourse, I think it’s very helpful, in fact it’s critical, that we all deal with objective information.

I, along with many of my Republican colleagues, believe there is so much more we can do for those who are trapped in our social safety net programs. But we are limited by the level of discourse with which of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are willing to engage.

Visual art and writing don’t exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other, because each is capable of things the other can’t do at all. Sometimes one picture is equal to 30 pages of discourse, just as there are things images are completely incapable of communicating.

I am interested in levels of brain discourse. How articulate are the voices in your head? You know, there’s a different voice for the phone, and a different voice if you’re talking in bed. When you’re starting off with a narrator, it’s interesting to think, where is their voice coming from, what part of their brain?

In U.S. discourse, immigrants are mostly represented as less than human, a policy problem, or as just that, a category, and categories are prisons.

The discourse of the West and the attitudes of its leaders are important because they influence public debate in Turkey.

There is a lot of noise and conflict in our political discourse, which is fun to cover, but I’m convinced from my travels that people also thirst for more details as well as insight and context.

What has struck me about the political world, as opposed to the business world, is that rational discourse has become all but impossible. All too often, arguments are conducted not on the basis of facts but on the basis of emotion – and, honestly, it is no fun being abused in the pages of tabloid newspapers or online.

In their pursuit of growth and diversification, African economies should consider transforming the discourse from a focus on industrialisation to a broader one centred on value addition in agriculture, manufacturing, and services.

September 11 was a wake-up call to me. I don’t want to contribute to the hate in any shape or form. I now regret in the past being silent about what I have heard in the Islamic discourse and being part of that with my own anger.

The small amount of people that control the discourse around painting – I thought that the whole museum world was just a bunch of phonies, and I didn’t really want to have anything to do with it. I guess I did installations, in a funny way, because they couldn’t be commodified.