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In conscious life, we achieve some sense of ourselves as reasonably unified, coherent selves, and without this action would be impossible. But all this is merely at the ‘imaginary’ level of the ego, which is no more than the tip of the iceberg of the human subject known to psychoanalysis. The ego is function or effect of a subject which is always dispersed, never identical with itself, strung out along the chains of the discourses which constitute it.

— Terry Eagleton

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More quotes by Terry Eagleton

After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.

Why Marx Was Right (2011)

The truth is that the past exists no more than the future, even though it feels as though it does.

Why Marx Was Right (2011)

There seems to be something in humanity which will not bow meekly to the insolence of power.

Why Marx Was Right (2011)

Understanding is always in some sense retrospective, which is what Hegel meant by remarking that the owl of Minerva flies only at night.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

The truth is that liberal humanism is at once largely ineffectual, and the best ideology of the 'human' that present bourgeois society can muster.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Terry Eagleton (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.