14+ Irving Howe Quotes On Education, Slavery And Our Fars

Irving Howe (1920-1993) was an American literary and social critic. He was a prominent figure in the New York Intellectuals and a long-time editor of Dissent magazine. He wrote extensively on American literature and culture, and was known for his Marxist humanist approach to literature and politics. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Irving Howe on education, leadership, slavery.

Imagination is not something apart and hermetic, not a way of leaving reality behind; it is a way of engaging reality. — Irving Howe

The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable. — Irving Howe

One great flaw in the reforming passion is that in its eagerness to remedy social wrongs it tends to neglect, certainly to undervalue, the experience of those whose lives it wishes to improve. — Irving Howe

Language rarely lies. It can reveal the insincerity of a writer's claims simply through a grating adjective or an inflated phrase. We come upon a frenzy of words and suspect it hides a paucity of feeling. — Irving Howe

The most glorious vision of the intellectual life is still that which is loosely called humanist: the idea of a mind committed yet dispassionate, ready to stand alone, curious, eager, skeptical. The banner of critical independence, ragged and torn though it may be, is still the best we have. — Irving Howe

I was in a garden at the Rodin Museum. For a few minutes I was alone, sitting on a bench between two long hedges of roses. Pink roses. Suddenly I felt the most powerful feeling of peace, and I had the thought that death, if it means an absorption into a reality like the one that was before me, might be all right. — Irving Howe

Comedy speaks for civilization; farce bears an ill-concealed, sometimes unconcealed animus against civilization. Often against civility too. — Irving Howe

Could we say that the short short is to other kinds of fiction somewhat as the lyric is to other kinds of poetry? The lyric does not seek meaning through extension, it accepts the enigmas of confinement. It strives for a rapid unity of impression, an experience rendered in its wink of immediacy. And so too with the short short. — Irving Howe

The message of guidance that neither politics nor philosophy nor religion now seems able to provide, we look for in modern literature. — Irving Howe

Taste speaks through a turn of phrase, a curl of the lip, a shrug of the shoulder: it makes an atmosphere. — Irving Howe

Good readers make much out of little. — Irving Howe

The cruelest thing anyone can do to Portnoy's Complaint is to read it twice. — Irving Howe

Sometimes ... the short short appears to rest on nothing more than a fragile anecdote which the writer has managed to drape with a quantity of suggestion. A single incident, a mere anecdote - these form the spine of the short short. — Irving Howe

No one has ever seen the self. It has no visible shape, nor does it occupy measurable space. It is an abstraction, like other abstractions equally elusive: the individual, the mind, the society — Irving Howe

Life Lessons by Irving Howe

1. Irving Howe's work demonstrates the importance of understanding history in order to understand the present. He encourages readers to think critically and to question accepted narratives and interpretations of history.
2. Howe's work also emphasizes the need to recognize the complexity of history, and to appreciate the nuances and contradictions that exist within it.
3. Finally, Howe's work encourages readers to recognize the power of history in shaping our current world, and to use it as a tool to create a more just and equitable future.