“I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others—because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward.”

— Tara Westover

Source: Educated (2018)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Feb. 19, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize…" by Tara Westover?

Tara Westover 17

American historian and author 1986

Related quotes

“When I said, "I feel like everything I tried to do is there", it is less because of what I did than it is a case of Michael keeping his word. Sometimes he'd launch into a discourse, a convoluted discourse about something or other, and I had no idea what he was saying. I'd tease him about it, "What on earth are you talking about?"”

Madeleine Stowe (1958) American actress

Mohican Press interview (2005)

“No other language than some soft sweet sounds
She had caught from the voices of the birds
When singing to the morning, and the notes
Sent from the waterfall, when, like a harp,
It held discourse in music with the wind.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The London Literary Gazette, 1823

“Sydneian showers
Of sweet discourse, whose powers
Can crown old Winter’s head with flowers.”

Richard Crashaw (1612–1649) British writer

Wishes for the Supposed Mistress

“Plato was disturbed by written discourse because … if an individual goes to it with a question in his mind, it “always gives one unvarying answer.””

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 95.

“The roles that we construct are constructed because we feel that they will help us to survive and also, of course, because they fulfill something in our personalities; and one does not, therefore, cease playing a role simply because one has begun to understand it.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy" in Esquire (May 1961)
Context: The roles that we construct are constructed because we feel that they will help us to survive and also, of course, because they fulfill something in our personalities; and one does not, therefore, cease playing a role simply because one has begun to understand it. All roles are dangerous. The world tends to trap you in the role you play and it is always extremely hard to maintain a watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is.