Top 122 Discourse Quotes

Look I can’t get into the minds of people who made decisions to support us or support anybody else. But I can tell you that Scott Lively, a lot of what he says and a lot of what he believes doesn’t belong in public discourse.

I’m in the civil discourse business. I think it takes all kinds. And more power to everybody.

Where wise actions are the fruit of life, wise discourse is the pollination.

A good discourse is that from which nothing can be retrenched without cutting into the quick.

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.

We will continue to invest in our people and technology to help provide a safe place for civic discourse and meaningful connections on Facebook.

The culture of rigorous questioning and open discourse at the University of Chicago has opened minds to ideas that have changed the world.

Sermons remain one of the last forms of public discourse where it is culturally forbidden to talk back.

In the past, great communicators were great orators, but great communicators today sound conversational, and interrupting is common in conversation. And public discourse is now more about entertainment than enlightenment.

A lot of people who voted for Barack Obama expected and were led to expect something new in politics: a new tone of political discourse in Washington. And I think – I think they’re disappointed, because Barack Obama is not a new kind of politician. In fact, he’s an old Chicago politician.

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.

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.

Wishing to open my mouth, O brethren, and speak on the exalted theme of humility, I am filled with fear, even as a man who understands that he is about to discourse concerning God with the art of his own words. For humility is the raiment of the Godhead.

Bad faith likes discourse on friendship and loyalty.

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.

I speak for Kashmiri pundits because injustice has been done to them, and the political discourse doesn’t give them enough importance.

Two truths are all too often overshadowed in today’s political discourse: Public service is a most honorable pursuit, and so is bipartisanship.

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.

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 women’s movement did not either.

What I really like about law is that it’s not an endless discourse like history or philosophy. In law, there comes a point where problems have to be solved, and cases decided.

In Israel, there is this reduction of the political discourse to something that is very limited. It’s as if you have that pitch that only dogs can hear. Sometimes I feel I speak at such a pitch that very few people around me communicate with what I’m saying.

With Barack Obama as president and the super-happening Michelle Obama as First Lady, you would think a new tone, a new tune, a kicky new jazzitude, would have entered Washington discourse, but it remains a landlocked island unto itself, held captive by its tribal fevers.

I’m not shy about heated debate or passionate discourse, but when people get crazy or rude, that’s a buzz kill. There’s got to be a better code of conduct, some basic etiquette.

You have to learn to have discourse with people you don’t necessarily agree with.

But ultimately what I was impressed by during my years in government was how much the intellectual climate and the prevailing intellectual notions constrained and represented the universe within which the discourse took place.

Universities are not places where police can come and arrest people. Let the children have a discourse as they want to. They will learn as they move on in life. But to target individuals and institutions is dangerous.

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.

I have said it before and I will continue to say that I don’t think art is the most effective form of protest. I don’t think it changes policy; I think it changes discourse, and discourse can change ideas, and for me, that’s what it’s about: having that space for conversation.

It is hard to know what you are talking about in mathematics, yet no one questions the validity of what you say. There is no other realm of discourse half so queer.

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.

Not only our political system is broken, but how we do business and have public discourse with one another. The system in Hollywood, specifically, is not depicting people of color; we’re not even talking about Asian Americans or Latino Americans; we’re not even getting into that question.

Proposition 19 already is a winner no matter what happens on election day. The mere fact of its being on the ballot has elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy in ways I could not have imagined a year ago.

Getting rid of Bin Laden is good for the cause of peace worldwide but what counts is to overcome the discourse and the methods – the violent methods – that were created and encouraged by Bin Laden and others in the world.

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.

This discourse, and the present frame of my mind, lead me rather to speak to those, who by feeling Satan’s fiery darts, know assuredly that there is a devil.

I have covered Israeli hostage and M.I.A. cases for more than 15 years, including the covert ways in which Israel’s powerful espionage agencies operate to bring soldiers home alive or dead. Over that time, the issue has come to dominate public discourse to a degree that no one could have predicted.

With sociolinguistics, after covering the basics of the field, I focused on discourse analysis.

I have and I will always work to promote a civil public discourse.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.