Kate Millett Quotes - Page 2

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Culture Hell Humanity Illness Madness Mental Illness Patriarchy

Perhaps nothing is so depressing an index of the inhumanity of the male-supremacist mentality as the fact that the more genial human traits are assigned to the underclass: affection, response to sympathy, kindness, cheerfulness.

Kate Millett

Depressing, Kindness, Males

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No one should be adored, it's fundamentally immoral.

Kate Millett

Should, Immoral

Kate Millett (1990). “The Loony-bin Trip”, p.69, University of Illinois Press

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People have a right to their own lives, and if you can't help somebody, you ought to get out of their way.

Kate Millett

Respect, People, Way

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They are more beautiful than anything in the world, kinetic sculptures, perfect form in motion.

Kate Millett

Beautiful, Perfect, Sculpture

Kate Millett (1990). “The Loony-bin Trip”, p.112, University of Illinois Press

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To be a rebel is not to be a revolutionary. It is more often by a way of spinning one's wheels deeper in sand.

Kate Millett

Rebel, Way, Spinning

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For it is precisely because certain groups have no representation in a number of recognized political structures that their position tends to be so stable, their oppression so continuous.

Kate Millett

Numbers, Political, Groups

Kate Millett (2016). “Sexual Politics”, p.24, Columbia University Press

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The rationale which accompanies that imposition of male authority euphemistically referred to as 'the battle of the sexes' bears a certain resemblance to the formulas of nations at war, where any heinousness is justified on the grounds that the enemy is either an inferior [part of the] species or really not human at all.

Kate Millett

Sex, War, Enemy

Kate Millett (2016). “Sexual Politics”, p.46, Columbia University Press

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In many patriarchies, language, as well as cultural tradition, reserve the human condition for the male. With the Indo-European languages this is a nearly inescapable habit of mind, for despite all the customary pretense that 'man' and 'humanity' are terms which apply equally to both sexes, the fact is hardly obscured that in practice, general application favors the male far more often than the female as referent, or even sole referent, for such designations.

Kate Millett

Sex, Men, Practice

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There are only moments. Live in this one. The happiness of these days.

Kate Millett

Moments, These Days

Kate Millett (2000). “Sita”, p.300, University of Illinois Press

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With the first act of cruelty committed in the name of revolution, with the first murder, with the first purge and execution, we have lost the revolution.

Kate Millett

Names, Firsts, Revolution

Kate Millett (2000). “Flying”, p.506, University of Illinois Press

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How crazy craziness makes everyone, how irrationally afraid. The madness hidden in each of us, called to, identified, aroused like a lust. And against that the jaw sets. The more I fear my own insanity the more I must punish yours.

Kate Millett

Crazy, Insanity, Lust

Kate Millett (1990). “The Loony-bin Trip”, p.68, University of Illinois Press

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Monogamy and prostitution go together.

Kate Millett

Together, Monogamy, Prostitution

Kate Millett (1975). “The Prostitution papers: a candid dialogue”

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Homosexuality was invented by a straight world dealing with its own bisexuality. But finding this difficult, and preferring not toadmit it, it invented a pariah state, a leper colony for the incorrigible whose very existence, when tolerated openly, was admonition to all. We queers keep everyone straight as whores keep matrons virtuous.

Kate Millett

World, Homosexuality, States

Kate Millett (2000). “Flying”, p.97, University of Illinois Press

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Coitus can scarcely be said to take place in a vacuum; although of itself it appears a biological and physical activity, it is set so deeply within the larger context of human affairs that it serves as a charged microcosm of the variety of attitudes and values to which culture subscribes. Among other things, it may serve as a model of sexual politics on an individual or personal plane.

Kate Millett

Attitude, May, Vacuums

Kate Millett (2016). “Sexual Politics”, p.23, Columbia University Press

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As women, we're probably more protective of children. Also, we've been minors all of our history

Kate Millett

Children, Protective, Minors

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Prostitution is really the only crime in the penal law where two people are doing a thing mutually agreed upon and yet only one, the female partner, is subject to arrest.

Kate Millett

Law, Two, People

Kate Millett (1976). “The prostitution papers: "A quartet for female voice"”

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The worst part about prostitution is that you're obliged not to sell sex only, but your humanity. That's the worst part of it: that what you're selling is your human dignity. Not really so much in bed, but in accepting the agreement - in becoming a bought person.

Kate Millett

Sex, Agreement, Humanity

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I'm slammed with an identity that can no longer say a word; mute with responsibility.

Kate Millett

Responsibility, Identity, Mute

Kate Millett (2000). “Flying”, p.23, University of Illinois Press

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The care of children ..is infinitely better left to the best trained practitioners of both sexes who have chosen it as a vocation...[This] would further undermine family structure while contributing to the freedom of women.

Kate Millett

Sex, Children, Feminist

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A revolution is not the overturning of a cart, a reshuffling in the cards of state. It is a process, a swelling, a new growth in the race. If it is real, not simply a trauma, it is another ring in the tree of history, layer upon layer of invisible tissue composing the evidence of a circle.

Kate Millett

Change, Real, Circles

Kate Millett (2000). “Flying”, p.360, University of Illinois Press

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Psychiatry causes so much death

Kate Millett

Causes, Psychiatry

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The whole bloody system is sick: the very notion of leadership, a balloon with a face painted upon it, elected and inflated by media's diabolic need to reduce ideas to personalities.

Kate Millett

Leadership, Media, Ideas

Kate Millett (2000). “Flying”, p.23, University of Illinois Press

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I believe there's a killer in all of us. I know there's one inside me. When you know the killer in you and you know also that you do not want to kill, you have to set yourself upon a course of learning. Not to kill that killer then, but to control it.

Kate Millett

Believe, Want, Killers

Kate Millett (2000). “Flying”, p.506, University of Illinois Press

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[Madness] is the jail we could all end up in. And we know it. And watch our step. For a lifetime. We behave. A fantastic and entire system of social control, by the threat of example as effective over the general population as detention centers in dictatorships, the image of the madhouse floats through every mind for the course of its lifetime.

Kate Millett

Jail, Mind, Steps

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The involuntary character of psychiatric treatment is at odds with the spirit and ethics of medicine itself.

Kate Millett

Character, Medicine, Odds

Kate Millett (1990). “The Loony-bin Trip”, p.312, University of Illinois Press

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Born: September 14, 1934
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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