The purpose of a good education is to show you that there are three sides to a two-sided story.
Stanley FishRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Sharing opinions can provide temporary satisfaction but may lack depth, while seeking truth requires effort and ultimately leads to personal growth.
In this quote, Stanley Fish illustrates the superficiality often found in opinion-sharing discussions, which can momentarily satisfy individuals but fail to truly fulfill them. In contrast, engaging in a diligent search for truth is likened to athletic training—it is challenging and can be exhausting, yet it enriches our understanding and fosters personal development over time, suggesting that meaningful inquiry leads to greater wisdom and fulfillment.
Themes
TruthInquiryOpinionsGrowthWisdom
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on critical thinking, this quote can be used to encourage students to delve deeper into subjects rather than just accepting surface-level opinions.
More from Stanley Fish
All quotes →This is what language does: organize the world into manageable, and in some sense artificial, units that can then be inhabited and manipulated.
Stanley FishRead
Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead.
Stanley FishRead
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.
Stanley FishRead
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.
Stanley FishRead
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