Stanley Fish

The purpose of a good education is to show you that there are three sides to a two-sided story.

This is what language does: organize the world into manageable, and in some sense artificial, units that can then be inhabited and manipulated.

Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead.

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.

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.

Opinion-sharing sessions are like junk food: they fill you up with starch and leave you feeling both sated and hungry. A sustained inquiry into the truth of a matter is an almost athletic experience; it may exhaust you, but it also improves you.