Stanley Fish Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I do not support abortion rights. Although what I would support in this vexed area is not clear to me.

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.

It is always incorrect to assume you can know what someone's moral convictions are based on their philosophical theories.

We in universities are not in the democracy business. What we do, when we're doing it, is teach and learn.