Stanley Fish quotes

Many people on the political left found my work psychologically liberating. They began to say: once you realize that standards emerge historically, then you can see through and discard all the norms to which we have been falsely enslaved. (Stanley Fish)
Any idea can be brought into the classroom if the point is to inquire into its structure, history, influence and so forth. But no idea belongs in the classroom if the point of introducing it is to recruit your students for the political agenda it may be thought to imply. View quote
Stanley Fish
I should have known better. Pro-life arguments are now based on scientific evidence and the pro-choice arguments are not. That is a cultural, historical fact. View quote
Stanley Fish
It is of no help to us that there is an absolute truth of the matter of things because unfortunately, none of us are in a position to say definitively what that is - although we all think that we are. View quote
Stanley Fish
Belief and knowledge are considered to be two different things. But they are not. View quote
Stanley Fish
The word "essay" means to try out, test, probe. In the essay style, successive clauses and sentences are not produced by an overarching logic, but by association; the impression that prose gives is that it can go anywhere in a manner wholly unpredictable. View quote
Stanley Fish
People write or speak sentences in order to produce an effect, and the success of a sentence is measured by the degree to which the desired effect has been achieved. View quote
Stanley Fish
No word floats without an anchoring connection within an overall structure. View quote
Stanley Fish
What we know of the world comes to us through words, or, to look at it from the other direction, when we write a sentence, we create a world, which is not the world, but the world as is appears within a dimension of assessment. View quote
Stanley Fish
Sentence writers are not copyists; they are selectors. View quote
Stanley Fish
Sentences can save us. Who could ask for anything more? (Stanley Fish)
The category of first sentence makes sense only if it is looking forward to the development of thematic concerns it perhaps only dimly foreshadows. View quote
Stanley Fish
It may sound paradoxical, but verbal fluency is the product of many hours spent writing about nothing, just as musical fluency is the product of hours spent repeating scales. View quote
Stanley Fish
Know what makes a sentence more than a random list, practice constructing sentences and explaining what you have done, and you will know how to make sentences forever and you will know too when what you are writing doesn't make the grade because it has degenerated into a mere pile of discrete items. View quote
Stanley Fish
The idea - the core idea of humanism - is that the act of reading about great deeds will lead you to imitate them. View quote
Stanley Fish
Just as you can practice three-word sentences or sentences that travel across time zones, so can you practice writing sentences that breathe unshakable conviction. View quote
Stanley Fish
We marvel at them; we read them aloud to our friends and spouses, even, occasionally, to passersby; we analyze them; we lament our inability to match them. View quote
Stanley Fish
The structure of a fully articulated profession is such that those who enter its precincts will find that the basic decisions, about where to look, what to do, and how to do it, have already been made. View quote
Stanley Fish
Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead. View quote
Stanley Fish
They are their own monuments, as is this quietly thrilling sentence. View quote
Stanley Fish
Before the words slide into their slots, they are just discrete items, pointing everywhere and nowhere. (Stanley Fish)
Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead. The shaping power of language cannot be avoided. We cannot choose to distance ourselves from it. We can only choose to employ it in one way rather than another. View quote
Stanley Fish
In general, higher education does not know how to speak for its interests. It offers a stance that is defensive, cowardly and likely to be ineffective. View quote
Stanley Fish
It is always incorrect to assume you can know what someone's moral convictions are based on their philosophical theories. View quote
Stanley Fish
We in universities are not in the democracy business. What we do, when we're doing it, is teach and learn. View quote
Stanley Fish