Barbara Ehrenreich Quotes - Page 4

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• It was a real surprise to me to come across the evidence that Christianity might once have been a danced religion. Certainly, some of the early church leaders thought this was great and spoke of what seems to have been circle dancing, perhaps around an altar.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Real, Circles, Dancing

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• Anyone who has invented a better mousetrap, or the contemporary equivalent, can expect to be harassed by strangers demanding that you read their unpublished manuscripts or undergo the humiliation of public speaking, usually on remote Midwestern campuses.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Innovation, Stranger, Public Speaking

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• People tend to judge presidents on how the economy performs, and yet we don't expect them to have the power to do much about it. Or we don't want them to exercise that power, if they were to have it.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Exercise, People, Judging

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. September 19, 2001.

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• As a general rule, when something gets elevated to apple-pie status in the hierarchy of American values, you have to suspect that its actual monetary value is skidding toward zero. Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent. Same thing with work: would we be so reverent about the 'work ethic' if it wasn't for the fact that the average working stiff's hourly pay is shrinking, year by year.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Zero, Work, Motherhood

  Ms., Oct. 1986

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• Imagine spending four billion years stocking the oceans with seafood, filling the ground with fossil fuels, and drilling the bees in honey production - only to produce a race of bed-wetters!

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Business, Ocean, Race

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• There seems to be no stopping drug frenzy once it takes hold of a nation. What starts with an innocuous HUGS, NOT DRUGS bumper sticker soon leads to wild talk of shooting dealers and making urine tests a condition for employment -- anywhere.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Drug, Hug, Stopping

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• The feminist anti-pornography movement, no less than the feminist movement of a century ago, encourages the assumption that male and female sexuality, and possibly morality, are as unlike as yin and yang.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Feminist, Feminism, Males

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• It seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of paper pushers the earth can sustain, and that human civilization will collapse when the number of, say, tax lawyers exceeds the world's total population of farmers, weavers, fisherpersons, and pediatric nurses.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Civilization, Numbers, Nurse

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• Upscale young men seem to go for the kind of woman who plays with a full deck of credit cards.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Men, Play, Cards

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• our great common challenge ... is to free people from religion, get it out of our laws, our schools, our health systems, our government and, I would add, also our sporting events. I would really like to see some separation of church and stadium, if we could work on that.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  School, Government, Law

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• A free-enterprise economy depends only on markets, and according to the most advanced mathematical macroeconomic theory, markets depend only on moods: specifically, the mood of the men in the pinstripes, also known as the Boys on the Street. When the Boys are in a good mood, the market thrives; when they get scared or sullen, it is time for each one of us to look into the retail apple business.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Boys, Men, Apples

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• To live in poverty is to live with constant uncertainty, to accept galling indignities, and to expect harassment by the police, welfare officials and employers, as well as by others who are poor and desperate.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Expectations, Police, Poverty

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1989). “FEAR OF FALLING”, Pantheon

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• Individually the poor are not too tempting to thieves, for obvious reasons. Mug a banker and you might score a wallet containing a month's rent. Mug a janitor and you will be lucky to get away with bus fare to flee the crime scene.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Bankers, Thieves, Lucky

  "Preying on the Poor". www.tomdispatch.com. May 17, 2012.

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• The fact is that heterosexual sex for most people is in no way free of the power relations between men and women.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Sex, Men, People

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• The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well. The truth is, many things are worth doing only in the most slovenly, halfhearted fashion possible, and many other things are not worth doing at all.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Life, Success, Fashion

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• Personally, I can't see why it would be any less romantic to find a husband in a nice four-color catalogue than in the average downtown bar at happy hour.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Romantic, Husband, Nice

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• Then, in the 1980's, came the paroxysm of downsizing, and the very nature of the corporation was thrown into doubt. In what began almost as a fad and quickly matured into an unshakable habit, companies were 'restructuring,' 'reengineering,' and generally cutting as many jobs as possible, white collar as well as blue . . . The New York Times captured the new corporate order succinctly in 1987, reporting that... 'All such allegiances are viewed as expendable under the new rules. With survival at stake, only market leadership, strong profits and a high stock price can be allowed to matter'.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Strong, Jobs, New York

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• The "discovery" of poverty at the beginning of the 1960s was something like the "discovery" of America almost five hundred years earlier. In the case of each of these exotic terrains, plenty of people were on the site before the discoverers ever arrived.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Discovery, Years, America

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1989). “FEAR OF FALLING”, Pantheon

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• Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don't happen to think it's an appropriate subject for an 'ethic.'

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Work, Thinking, Ethics

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• For the millions of us who live glued to computer keyboards at work and TV monitors at home, food may be more than entertainment. It may be the only sensual experience left.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Food, Home, Sensual

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• it used to be almost the first question (just after 'Can you type?') in the standard female job interview: 'Are you now, or have you ever, contemplated marriage, motherhood, or the violent overthrow of the U.S. government?

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Jobs, Motherhood, Government

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own Ronald Reagan.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Pain, Thinking, Careers

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• Cheerfulness, up to and including delusion and false hope, has a recognized place in medicine.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Pain, Medicine, False Hope

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• The psychological trauma of losing a job can be as great as the trauma of a divorce. It creates a lot of anger and emotional hardship. People may become quite depressed.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Jobs, Divorce, Emotional

  "Bait and Switch". Interview with April Dembosky, www.motherjones.com. September 9, 2005.

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• Once you do lose a job, there are not a lot of social supports for you. You lose health insurance because we have this absurd system in America where health insurance is usually tied to employment. Your income dips. And that's when you get into selling the house.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Jobs, America, House

  7 Copy quote

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