Discourse Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Taisen Deshimaru, Saint Francis de Sales, Izaak Walton, Salvatore Quasimodo, Aphra Behn and many others.
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.
Proponents of so-called pluralism feel compelled to ban religious considerations from public discourse because they know, instinctively if not intellectually, that their faith is in direct conflict with the God of the Bible, and that in the end the two positions are irreconcilable.
If Shakespeare required a word and had not met it in civilized discourse, he unhesitatingly made it up.
Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear
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.
There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses.
Of Nature itself upon the soul; the sunrise, the haze of autumn, the winter starlight seem interlocutors; the prevailing sense is that of an exposition in poetry; a high discourse, the voice of the speaker seems to breathe as much from the landscape as from his own breast; it is Nature communing with the seer.
That man is guilty of impertinence who considers not the circumstances of time, or engrosses the conversation, or makes himself the subject of his discourse, or pays no regard to the company he is in.
People will be surprised at the eagerness with which we went aboutpretending to rouse from its slumber a sexuality which everyВthing-our discourses, our customs, our institutions, our regulations, our knowledges-was busy producing in the light of day and broadcasting to noisy accompaniment.
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.
Conversion and zealotry, just like revelation and apostasy, are flip sides of the same coin, the currency of a political culture having more in common with religion than rational discourse.
The unification of opposites which characterizes the commercial and political style is one of the many ways in which discourse and communication make themselves immune against the expression of protest and refusal.
When you hear anyone policing the bodies of trans women, misgendering and othering us, and violently exiling us from spaces, you should not dismiss it as a trans issue that trans women should speak out against. You should be engaged in the dialogue, discourse, and activism that challenges the very fibers of your movement.
Art in progress. MAK has occupied a unique and valuable space as international host for discourse between the arts and architecture.
how can a democratic discourse exist in a corporate owned informational system? Who, for example, possesses freedom of speech in such a society?
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.
I’m a storyteller. I feel like the issue of discourse is an important one because there’s a lot of political and ideological discourse that goes around, and we relate to that on an intellectual level.
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.
The philosophers talk across the centuries exclusively to one another, hermetically sealed from any influences derived from non-philosophical discourse.
Public discourse requires making an argument for a point of view, not having an argument – as in having a fight.
The culture of rigorous questioning and open discourse at the University of Chicago has opened minds to ideas that have changed the world.
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.
Let your Discourse with Men of Business be Short and Comprehensive.
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.
Contention is inseparable from creating knowledge. It is not contention we should try to avoid, but discourses that attempt to suppress contention.
Self-criticism expands the opportunities for discourse and eliminates the need for an adversary.
Where wise actions are the fruit of life, wise discourse is the pollination.
When I was younger, I used to be very impatient with anyone who wasn’t doing overtly political work. I’ve since come to feel that some writers have an appetite or a need for the political, for political discourse, for historical political subjects.
Using the passive voice is always very helpful. Mind you, a lot of that propaganda English emanates from here. The British establishment has always used the passive voice. It’s been a weapon of discourse so those who committed terrible acts in the old empire could not be identified.
The MDGs have been useful in moving human rights and development discourse together and in highlighting the need for greater accountability at all levels.
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.
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.
[The sceptic] must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge any thing, that all human life must perish, were his principles to prevail.All discourse, all action would immediately cease, and men remain in a total lethargy, till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an end to their miserable existence.
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.
Of our thinking it is but the upper surface that we shape into articulate thought; underneath the region of argument and conscious discourse lies the region of meditation.
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.
To write or speak is to communicate. To communicate is to share meanings, make them вЂcommon’ to all participants in the discourse. (The etymological root of communication means вЂcommon.’)
We are all full of discourses that we only half understand and half mean.
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.
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.
My argument is limited to saying that a major new medium changes the structure of discourse; it does so by encouraging certain uses of the intellect, by favoring certain definitions of intelligence and wisdom, and by demanding a certain kind of content – in a phrase, by creating new forms of truth-telling.
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.
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.
If the propositions of this Discourse are tenable, the “state of progressive collapse” is precisely that state in which alone we are warranted in considering All Things.
Words themselves – the very material of our discourse increasingly take on masks or disguises
An average Christian, in an average church, listen to an average Sunday sermon has achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse — and there have been some extraordinary arrogant scientists.
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.
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.
Grace, respect, reserve, and empathetic listening are qualities sorely missing from the public discourse now.
The subject of feminism cannot be purely a fiction, as some postmodern writers suggest, produced by the discourses of power.
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?
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.
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.
I hold to the idea that civility, understood as the willingness to engage in public discourse, is the first virtue of citizens.
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.
Public discourse has been polluted now for decades by corporate-funded disinformation – not just with climate change but with a host of health, environmental and societal threats. The implications for the planet are grim.
You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of complicated state of mind. The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.
What we won’t do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of “true scientific discourse.” It isn’t.
If we ban whatever offends any group in our diverse society, we will soon have no art, no culture, no humor, no satire. Satire is by its nature offensive. So is much art and political discourse. The value of these expressions far outweighs their risk.
To be consistent with this discourse of lifting up the military dictatorship in Brazil, the dictatorship that extended from 1964 to 1985, Bolsonaro, his whole life, has been uplifting not only the dictatorship itself but also the methods that the dictatorship used to stay in power, including torture.
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.
Architecture is a discourse; everything is a discourse. Fashion discourse is actually a micro-discourse, because it’s centered around the body. It is the most rapidly developing form of discourse.
Informed opponents of Obama’s healthcare initiative have expressed dismay at the low level of discourse.
I have and I will always work to promote a civil public 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.
A man’s behavior is the index of the man, and his discourse is the index of his understanding.
It’s very much the currency of discourse on social media where political disagreements very quickly become very personalised.
We are the raison d’ГЄtre of the entire system. We are also the employers of those in public office and in the public service. Why should we accept from them a discourse which suggests contempt for us and for the democratic system?
Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, Manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man
He had not breathed a word of love, or dropped one hint of tenderness or affection, and yet I had been supremely happy. To be near him, to hear him talk as he did talk, and to feel that he thought me worthy to be so spoken to – capable of understanding and duly appreciating such discourse – was enough.
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’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.
The artificial separation of politics and culture is nowhere more pronounced than in the discourse of foreign policy and international affairs.
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.
The ontological concept of truth is in the centre of a logic which may serve as a model of pre- technological rationality. It is the rationality of a two-dimensional universe of discourse which, contrasts with the of thought and behavior that develop in the execution of the technological project.
To counter the fixation on a rhetoric of victimhood, black folks must engage in a discourse of self-determination.
Without needing to be theoretically instructed, consciousness quickly realizes that it is the site of variously contending discourses.
I do not say this, that I think there should be no difference of opinions in conversation, nor opposition in men’s discourses… ‘Tis not the owning one’s dissent from another, that I speak against, but the manner of doing it.
It’s important that people understand who I am and where I come from and not just have it shaped by purely political discourse.
I think we do have a better understanding now of how moral thought and discourse function.
I speak for Kashmiri pundits because injustice has been done to them, and the political discourse doesn’t give them enough importance.
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.
I’ve watched politics for years. Republicans rarely get credit for the good things that happen in the economy during their watch. Democrats always get more credit than they deserve. They are just better at political discourse that we are.
The Jesuits were good educators, exceptional teachers. In an era and in a society where freedom of speech was not held in high regard, of course, that the discourse be focused on what they were teaching, but we were able to go beyond this framework without incurring too great a risk.
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 womens movement did not either.
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.
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.
My grandparents would have big, long arguments that were entertaining and that’s where I first noticed, and was thrilled by, political discourse.
Not only has photography so thoroughly saturated our visual environment as to make the invention of visual images seem archaic, but it is also clear that photography is too multiple, too useful to other discourses, ever to be wholly contained within traditional definitions of art.
Modernist discourse […] incorporates semantic devices – such as the labeling of theism as ‘religion’ and naturalism as ‘science‘ – that work to prevent a dangerous debate over fundamental assumptions from breaking out in the open.
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.
Atheists have just as much of a right to the public discourse as any … people of any religious faith in this country.
Nothing is more detestable than a professed declaimer who retails his discourses as a quack does his medicines.
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.
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.
Every discourse is an approximate answer: but it is of small consequence, that we do not get it into verbs and nouns, whilst it abides for contemplation forever.
Profanity is the parlance of the fool. Why curse when there is such a magnificent language with which to discourse?
Fruitful discourse in science or theology requires us to believe that within the contexts of normal discourse there are some true statements.
Certain teachers have tremendous amounts of experience. They are articulate, and they give wonderful discourse. But at some point along the road, they themselves learned from and studied a book.
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.
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.
It would be a big favor to political discourse; to our ability to do our work here in Congress; and to the American people, to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and, more importantly, in their future.
In 1949, China declared independence – an event known in Western discourse as ‘the loss of China’ in the U.S. – with bitter recriminations and conflict over who was responsible for that loss.
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.
But once you publish a book, doesn’t it by definition become the realm of public discourse? Otherwise, wouldn’t we just write books and print them out ourselves, and give them to specific people we felt comfortable giving them to–like gifts? Isn’t publishing sort of a social contract?
I think it’s always good when you’re able to, as an actor, allow your work to be some kind of a conduit for social discourse, and an examination of where we are, as a society.
I am comfortable with my level of public discourse.
Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.
We can’t handle violence in women characters but we CAN handle what’s done to women in our present tense every second of the day worldwide? Or next door? Or in political or medical discourse? Please. That idea just makes me want to crap on a table at a very fancy restaurant.
What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused.
Racial profiling punishes innocent individuals for the past actions of those who look and sound like them. It misdirects crucial resources and undercuts the trust needed between law enforcement and the communities they serve. It has no place in our national discourse, and no place in our nation’s police departments.
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.
Roger Ebert was a very valiant soldier of cinema who passed away, and we miss him. It’s over with serious discourse about cinema in the print media and on television. It has been replaced by celebrity news. So we are speaking in his spirit always.
Civilized discourse demands critical thinking, self-reflexiveness, sober-headed analysis.
Without a rigorous, self-critical discourse, one risks lapsing into pious platitudes and unexamined generalizations.
To separate journalism and poetry, therefore-history and poetry-to set them up at opposite ends of the world of discourse, is to separate seeing from the feel of seeing, emotion from the acting of emotion, knowledge from the realization of knowledge.
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.
As a filmmaker, it’s not my intent to trigger or shape national discourse. My task is to make as powerful and understandable a film as I can. What happens next is what happens next.
I rarely speak about God. To God yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But open discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree.
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.
In the case of some people, not even if we had the most accurate scientific knowledge, would it be easy to persuade them were we to address them through the medium of that knowledge; for a scientific discourse, it is the privilege of education to appreciate, and it is impossible that this should extend to the multitude.
I think the reporter or journalist is well served by having a responsibility to the powerless, to use a much-abused clichГ©. The voice of the powerless is in some danger of not being heard in the elite discourses we now have in the mainstream media.
If someone’s really busy listening to other CDs, and worried about what’s new and what’s truly relevant for discourse now, maybe it isn’t that interesting. To me it is, because I’m tuned into that and that’s what I like, so it’s interesting to me. It’s all I can do.
The discourses of the table among true loving friends are held in strict silence.
Promoting open and critical and respectful scientific discourse seems like a pretty good goal to me.
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.
I think the reason you see so many people dropping out of politics is because there’s an anti-poetic strain in modern political discourse.
No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute Knowledge of Fact.
I heard many discourses which were good for the soul, but I could not discover in the case of any one of the teachers that his life was worthy of his words.
Good as is discourse, silence is better and shames it.
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.
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.
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.
As a country, we still have a lot of work to do. We need to agree on some basic rules for civil discourse.
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.
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.
Intellectual discourse and investigation is admittedly great fun but only truly meaningful when conducted in the service of others.
Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble. So those on scepticism cause believers to affirm. Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, few doubtingly of scepticism.
An anecdote is related of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621-1683), who, in speaking of religion, said, “People differ in their discourse and profession about these matters, but men of sense are really but of one religion.” To the inquiry of “What religion?” the Earl said, “Men of sense never tell it”.
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.
The Left doesn’t understand the importance of God in the Israeli public discourse, and Yesh Atid does.
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.
In general, in America, every discourse in literature in 15 minutes degenerates into a conversation about ethics, morality and this and that. The Holocaust and the consequences of it. Well, I find it terribly boring, predictable and unimportant, because what matters about literature is esthetic achievement.
Ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe.
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.
The Olivet Discourse is not about the Second Coming of Christ. It is a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
The unconscious is the discourse of the Other.
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.
There is no civil discourse left and it is really sad.
I don’t believe that there’s such a thing as objectivity in much of journalism, but I think there is a serious effort to and a regard for facts and into taking that stuff seriously is very important to the public discourse and it’s very important to democracy.
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.
‘As a man who knows how to make his education into a rule of life not a means of showing off; who can control himself and obey his own principles.’ The true mirror of our discourse is the course of our lives.
We are aching to come together and I think it has little to do with liberal or conservative discourse. I think it has to do with increasing disconnection with what is real and soul-serving.
Expose every belief to the light of reason, discourse, facts, scientific observations; question everything, be sceptical because this is the only chance at life you will ever get.
Of all Discourse , governed by desire of Knowledge, there is at last an End , either by attaining, or by giving over.
It is an impertinent and unreasonable fault in conversation for one man to take up all the discourse.
There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse.
Fruitful discourse in science or theology requires us to believe that within the contexts of normal discourse there are some true statements.
The unsaid part is the best of every discourse.
In the first instance, performativity must be understood not as a singular or deliberate вЂact,’ but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names
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.
A paradox: the same century invented history and photography. But history is a memory fabricated according to positive formulas, a pure intellectual discourse which abolishes mythic time; and the photograph is a certain but fugitive testimony.
I wish to note that the level of discourse in Nigeria is abysmally low, and, usually, garnished with character assassination. We allow our personal frustrations to becloud reason
It seems Korean women are enjoying a passive and fragile status, intoxicated by appearance. Not only feminism, but any serious discourse ends up being swept away by popular culture in Korea.
One would think that the larger the company is in which we are engaged, the greater variety of thoughts and subjects would be started into discourse; but, instead of this we find that conversation is never so much straightened and confined, as in numerous assemblies.
You have to connect your work to what people are doing. A good way is to construct a bridge between theory and practice – Amartya Sen and I tried this by founding the Human Development and Capabilities Association where practitioners meet theoreticians and their discourse influences practice.
Within our lifetime, we can remember a time when Islamism wasn’t the dominant form of discourse or the aim should be to minimise the absolutists within any religious community and contain them.
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.
There is that lovely feeling of one reader telling another, ‘You must read this.’ I’ve always wanted to write a book like that, with the sense that you are contributing to the discourse in middle America, a discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me.
If millions of Americans choose to weigh in on the outcome of ‘American Idol’ through text messages and the Web, then why not harness similar technological tools to encourage discourse on the political landscape?
Neoliberalism considers the discourse of equality, justice, and democracy quaint, if not dangerous and must be either trivialized, turned into its Orwellian opposite, or eviscerated from public life.
Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.
Where no interest is takes in science, literature and liberal pursuits, mere facts and insignificant criticisms necessarily become the themes of discourse; and minds, strangers alike to activity and meditation, become so limited as to render all intercourse with them at once tasteless and oppressive.
I actually felt diminished by watching [Donald Trump’s]. If this is what discourse has become in America, who even wants to know about it? It’s just too demoralizing and unsettling.
In England we see people lulled sleep with solid and elaborate discourses of piety, who would be warmed and transported out of themselves by the bellowings and distortions of enthusiasm.
To be sure, mathematics can be extended to any branch of knowledge, including economics, provided the concepts are so clearly defined as to permit accurate symbolic representation. That is only another way of saying that in some branches of discourse it is desirable to know what you are talking about.
There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by the accommodations they have made to religious irrationality.
