Where wise actions are the fruit of life, wise discourse is the pollination. — Bryant H. McGill
[Knowledge is governed not by] a theory of knowledge, but by a theory of discursive practice. — Michel Foucault
Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; an argument an exchange of ignorance. — Robert Quillen
The ability to engage in reasoned discourse, even when you passionately disagree with someone, is the hallmark of a civilized society. — Bret Weinstein
Contention is inseparable from creating knowledge. It is not contention we should try to avoid, but discourses that attempt to suppress contention. — Joyce Appleby
Great minds discuss ideas, medium minds discuss events, and little minds discuss people. — Indian Proverbs
Instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all. — Pericles
Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory. — Emily Post
Having a good discussion is like having riches. — African Proverbs
Short Discourse Quotes
Let your Discourse with Men of Business be Short and Comprehensive. — George Washington
There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse. — John Locke
A man's behavior is the index of the man, and his discourse is the index of his understanding. — Ali ibn Abi Talib
A good discourse is that from which nothing can be retrenched without cutting into the quick. — Saint Francis de Sales
Discourse is fleeting, but junk mail is forever. — Joe Bob Briggs
False attributions are the bane of legitimate discourse. — Winston Smith
I'm in the civil discourse business. I think it takes all kinds. And more power to everybody. — Jim Lehrer
I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient. — Roland Barthes
Uncommon expressions are a disfigurement rather than an embellishment of discourse. — David Hume
A moral lesson is better expressed in short sayings than in long discourse. — Johann Georg Zimmermann
Never discourse anyone who makes continual progress, no mater how slow
Civil Discourse Quotes
I hold to the idea that civility, understood as the willingness to engage in public discourse, is the first virtue of citizens. — Mark Kingwell
We need to in this country begin again to raise civil discourse to another level. I mean, we shout and scream and yell and get very little accomplished, but you can disagree very much with the next guy and still be friends and acquaintances. — Leah Ward Sears
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. — Mike Pompeo
President Obama promised to usher in a new era of civility in our political discourse. We should make sure that, quote, "talk to each other in ways that heal, not in ways that wound," close quote. — Eric Bolling
In all great civilizations, garden discourses have belonged to larger discourses about beauty, the good life, the relation of humankind to nature, and so on. — David E. Cooper
We have, a Democrat Party once again adding to the civility of the discourse, Maxine Waters claiming that [Donald] Trump and his people are scumbags 'cause Trump wants to help [Vladimir] Putin put the Soviet Union back together by raping a bunch of other countries and stealing their resources. — Rush Limbaugh
We need to regain the art of civil discourse and more practically, I don't think you change anyone's mind by calling them names. — Steven Petrow
President Obama, right after the Gabby Gifford shooting said we need to usher in a new era of civil discourse in politics. But not heeding his own advice. — Eric Bolling
I do think women change the discourse in Senate and I think it is more civil when women are involved. — Patty Judge
If Shakespeare required a word and had not met it in civilized discourse, he unhesitatingly made it up. — Amy Koppelman
One Discourse Quotes
During depression the world disappears. Language itself. One has nothing to say. Nothing. No small talk, no anecdotes. Nothing can be risked on the board of talk. Because the inner voice is so urgent in its own discourse: How shall I live? How shall I manage the future? Why should I go on? — Kate Millett
One-dimensional thought is systematically promoted by the makers of politics and their purveyors of mass information. Their universe of discourse is populated by self-validating hypotheses which, incessantly and monopolistically repeated, become hyponotic definitions of dictations. — Herbert Marcuse
A film is one small voice among other large ones. The film is a tiny part of the discourse. You do what you can but under no illusions of what a film can do. — Ken Loach
The real achievement in discoveries... is seeing an analogy where no one saw one before... The essence of discovery is that unlikely marriage of cabbages and kings — of previously unrelated frames of reference or universes of discourse — whose union will solve the previously insoluble problem. — Arthur Koestler
The skilful class of flatterers praise the discourse of an ignorant friend and the face of a deformed one. — Juvenal
The Journal of Discourses ranks as one of the standard works of the Church, and every right-minded Saint will certainly welcome with joy every Number as it comes forth from the press as an additional reflector of 'the light that shines from Zion's hill. — George Q. Cannon
Sermons remain one of the last forms of public discourse where it is culturally forbidden to talk back. — Harvey Cox
There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses. — Michel Foucault
If one wishes to know love, one must live love, in action. Thoughts, readings and discourse on love are of value only as they present questions to be acted upon. — Leo Buscaglia
Rational discourse is only one way of presenting and examining an issue and by no means the best. Our new intellectuals are not aware of its limitations and of the nature of the things outside. — Paul Feyerabend
Political Discourse Quotes
The debates are part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have become a format that defies meaningful discourse. They should be charged with sabotaging the electoral process. — Walter Cronkite
In our national discourse and in pursuing our national agenda, we must never leave anyone behind. We must reach out to the many who may have been disaffected and left confused by political games, deceit and showmanship. The people first must transcend every level of society. — Najib Razak
Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of advanced reflection; it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small acts and every day discourse: it bids man soften towards others, and forget himself for the sake of others: it constrains genuine nature, which is selfish and gross. — Hippolyte Taine
Two truths are all too often overshadowed in today's political discourse: Public service is a most honorable pursuit, and so is bipartisanship. — Olympia Snowe
Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner. — Ursula K. Le Guin
This was a good example of the fascist policing of public discourse in this country by nominal liberals who have become as unthinkingly wedded to dogma as any junior member of the Spanish Inquisition. — Camille Paglia
If you listen to the political discourse in America today, you would think that all our problems have been caused by the Mexicans of the Chinese or the Muslims. The reality is that we have caused our own problems. Whatever has happened has been caused by isolating ourselves or blaming others. — Fareed Zakaria
TV serves us most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse - news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion. — Neil Postman
The world of public discourse - political, social, diplomatic, commercial - has so corrupted language that we are rightly more suspicious of the meaning of words than we are convinced of their veracity. Language has been turned on its head. — Deena Metzger
The language we share is at the core of our identity as citizens, and our ticket to full participation in American political life. We can speak any language we want at the dinner table, but English is the language of public discourse, or the marketplace and of the voting booth. — S. I. Hayakawa
Public Discourse Quotes
Trigger warnings are an instantiation of the West's zeitgeist of perpetual offense and victimhood that defines much of public discourse. — Gad Saad
Spokespeople sell women the Iron Maiden and name her "Health": if public discourse were really concerned with women's health, it would turn angrily upon this aspect of the beauty myth. — Naomi Wolf
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. — Eric Alterman
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. — Cornel West
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. — Michael Sandel
As the growing emphasis on feelings crowds out reason, facts will play a smaller role in public discourse. — Paul Craig Roberts
The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing. We now have a mainstream press whose news agenda is increasingly influenced by this netherworld. — Carl Bernstein
I think it is very difficult today to have a reasoned public discourse on any controversial subject. Certainly, election years present a complicating factor. — John Poindexter
Actual human discourse happens within a number of contexts, not in some sort of unified public forum. — Rowan D. Williams
Actual human discourse happens within a number of contexts, not in some sort of unified public forum. — Rowan Williams
There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men. — John Locke
The agentive mind is not only active in nature, but it seeks out dialogue and discourse with other active minds. And it is through this dialogic, discursive process that we come to know the Other and his points of view, his stories. We learn an enormous amount not only about the world but about ourselves by discourse with Others. — Jerome Bruner
This great honor recognizes the history of CRISPR and the collaborative story of harnessing it into a profoundly powerful engineering technology that gives new hope and possibility to our society. What started as a curiosity-driven, fundamental discovery project has now become the breakthrough strategy used by countless researchers working to help improve the human condition. I encourage continued support of fundamental science as well as public discourse about the ethical uses and responsible regulation of CRISPR technology. — Jennifer Doudna
Because our ladies mostly attend Kalatshepams, (Religious discourses) they have fallen prey to the superstitions, blind beliefs, and immorality by the false and fictituous propaganda of the Brahmins. — Periyar E. V. Ramasamy
Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else. — Italo Calvino
What should we speak of When we are old as you? when we shall hear The rain and wind beat dark December? how, In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse The freezing hours away? — William Shakespeare
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. — Naomi Wolf
If you have a glass full of liquid you can discourse forever on its qualities, discuss whether it is cold, warm, whether it is really and truly composed of H-2-O, or even mineral water, or saki. Meditation is Drinking it! — Taisen Deshimaru
Prayer is not a discourse. It is a form of life, the life with God. That is why it is not confined to the moment of verbal statement. — Jacques Ellul
The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth. This is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem. It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other. — Chamath Palihapitiya
Your date’s response to effective communication can reveal more in five minutes than you could learn in months of dating without this kind of discourse. — Amir Levine
The simple record of these three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the discourses of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky
We will convert the entire world to Islam with our logic. We are confident that the Islamic logic, culture, and discourse can prove their superiority in all fields over all schools of thought and theories. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
This discourse, and the present frame of my mind, lead me rather to speak to those, who by feeling Satan's fiery darts, know assuredly that there is a devil. — George Whitefield
Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of light in a discourse, that make everything about them clear and beautiful. — Joseph Addison
We've taken on the major health problems of the poorest - tuberculosis, maternal mortality, AIDS, malaria - in four countries. We've scored some victories in the sense that we've cured or treated thousands and changed the discourse about what is possible. — Paul Farmer
If things are too similar, the dialogue is not very interesting. If you put in contrast, big and small, abstract and representational, you set up the possibility of a discourse. — Michael Craig-Martin
In the first instance, performativity must be understood not as a singular or deliberate ‘act,’ but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names — Judith Butler
When your Islamic discourse with someone becomes a debate, that's when you know that you have to stop. The psychology of a debate is like a sports competition, and no one likes to lose. So even if you make a good point, the other person isn't going to congratulate you. They are thinking about revenge. — Nouman Ali Khan
Spend your leisure time in cultivating an ear attentive to discourse, for in this way you will find that you learn with ease what others have found out with difficulty. — Isocrates
I'm not shy about heated debate or passionate discourse, but when people get crazy or rude, that's a buzz kill. There's got to be a better code of conduct, some basic etiquette. — Mos Def
But to ask pity of our body is like discoursing in front of an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the tides, and with which we should be appalled to find ourselves condemned to live. — Marcel Proust
When I hear a man discoursing of virtue, or of any sort of wisdom, who is a true man and worthy of his theme, I am delighted beyond measure: and I compare the man and his words, and note the harmony and correspondence of them. And such an one I deem to be the true musician, having in himself a fairer harmony than that of the lyre. — Plato
That which you or I think is most unique about ourselves we hide. In ordinary discourse, in the normal state, we share our common self, our superficial self. Yet what is most unique about us is what has the greatest potential for bonding us. When we share our uniqueness, we discover the commonality in greatness that defines everyone on the planet. — Robert E. Quinn
Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. — Helen Keller
A tiny portion of the population controls the lions share of the wealth and most of the command positions of state, manufacturing, banking, investment, publishing, higher education, philanthropy, and media... these individuals exercise a preponderant influence over what is passed off as public information and democratic discourse. — Michael Parenti
As one might expect, authoritarianism will at times cause children and students to adopt rebellious positions, defiant of any limit, discipline, or authority. But it will also lead to apathy, excessive obedience, uncritical conformity, lack of resistance against authoritarian discourse, self-abnegation, and fear of freedom. — Paulo Freire
The dominance of [an ideology] is shown by the fact that the dominated classes live their conditions of political existence through the forms of dominant political discourse: this means that often they live even their revolt against domination of the system within the frame of reference of the dominant legitimacy. — Nicos Poulantzas
In Conclusion
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