Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a rough idea of what it fee…

- Terry Eagleton

Literary texts do not exist on bookshelves: they are processes of signification materialized only in the practice of reading. For literature to happe…

- Terry Eagleton

Socialism is the completion of democracy, not the negation of it.

- Terry Eagleton

A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, …

- Terry Eagleton

Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpati…

- Terry Eagleton

The role of the intellectual, so it is said, is to speak truth to power. Noam Chomsky has dismissed this pious tag on two grounds. For one thing, pow…

- Terry Eagleton

Reading a text is more like tracing this process of constant flickering than it is like counting the beads on a necklace.

- Terry Eagleton

Genuine equality means not treating everyone the same, but attending equally to everyone’s different needs.

- Terry Eagleton

An enlightened trust in the sovereignty of human reason can be every bit as magical as the exploits of Merlin, and a faith in our capacity for limitl…

- Terry Eagleton