Barbara Ehrenreich Quotes - Page 3

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• There can be no more ancient and traditional American value than ignorance. English-only speakers brought it with them to this country three centuries ago, and they quickly imposed it on the Africans--who were not allowed to learn to read and write--and on the Native Americans, who were simply not allowed.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Country, Writing, Native American

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

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• But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state of mind. The lines at unemployment offices and churches offering free food includes strivers as well as slackers, habitual optimists as well as the chronically depressed. When and if the economy recovers we can never allow ourselves to forget how widespread our vulnerability is, how easy it is to spiral down toward destitution.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Offering, Should Have, Ideas

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2009). “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”, p.155, Macmillan

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• It is the marketplace that calls most clearly for men to be softer, more narcissistic and receptive, and the new man is the result.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Men, Narcissistic, Results

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

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• I'm not a nice person.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Nice, Nice Person, Persons

  "'Nickel and Dimed' author changes collars from blue to white". Interview with Rebecca Miller, The Associated Press, www.seattlepi.com.

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• We [on the left] have to be used to being a minority -- a small minority -- for some time to come. The odd thing is that the right, even when it is in power, likes to think of itself as an embattled minority against this elite that somehow runs everything. Whereas the left, even when it has no power at all, likes to imagine it somehow represents the majority of people. These are mirror-image delusions.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Running, Thinking, Mirrors

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• I think it's tragic that we have this human capacity, which appears to be hardwired, or so the evolutionary biologists say, for collective joy. We have these techniques for generating it that go back thousands of years, and yet we tend not to use this.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Thinking, Years, Joy

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• Whether you work outside the home or not, never tell them [your children] that being a mommy is your 'job.' Being a mommy is a relationship, not a profession.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Jobs, Children, Home

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

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• The secret of the truly successful ... is that they learned early in life how not to be busy.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Successful, Secret, Busy

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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 war with Iraq ... had to be one of the greatest non sequiturs in military history. Attacked by a gang composed largely of Islamic militants from Saudi Arabia, the United States countered by invading an unrelated country, and one of the most secular in the Middle East at that.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Country, Military, War

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2008). “Going to Extremes: Notes from a Divided Nation”, Granta Books (UK)

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• For anyone worn down, The Impossible Will Take a Little While is a bracing double cappuccino.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Littles, Impossible, Cappuccino

  79 Copy quote

• The Republicans hardly need a party and the cumbersome cadre of low-level officials that form one; they have a bankroll as large as the Pentagon's budget, dozens of fatted PACs, and the well-advertised support of the Christian deity.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Christian, Party, Support

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• Feminists have not tried to "destroy the family". We just thought the family was such a good idea that men might want to get involved in it too.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Men, Ideas, Feminist

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• Both chronic, long-term poverty and downward mobility from the middle class are in the same category of things that America likes not to think about.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Thinking, Class, America

  "Tomdispatch Interview: Ehrenreich, The Prey and the Predators". Interview with Tom Engelhardt, www.tomdispatch.com. June 4, 2006.

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• When you watch television, you never see people watching television. We love television because it brings us a world in which television does not exist.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  People, Doe, Watches

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• Exercise is the yuppie version of bulimia.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Fitness, Health, Exercise

  N.Y. Times, 17 Jan. 1985

  68 Copy quote

• No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Mother, Children, America

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

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• war is, in some not yet entirely defined sense, a self-replicating pattern of behavior, possessed of a dynamism not unlike that of living things.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  War, Self, Patterns

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2011). “Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War”, p.225, Granta Books

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• People who just pretend to have a positive attitude may be more acceptable, but they will still attract according to how they are really vibrating- the energy they are emanating will attract their circumstances.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Attitude, Work, People

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2006). “Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream”, p.84, Macmillan

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• the fastest-growing brand of religion is of the magical 'name it and claim it' variety, in which the deity exists only to meet one's immediate, self-identified needs.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Self, Names, Needs

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2008). “Going to Extremes: Notes from a Divided Nation”, Granta Books (UK)

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• There is a reason why America produced the most vigorous feminist movement in the world: We were one of the only countries in which the middle class (which is wealthy by world standards) customarily employed its own women as domestic servants.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Country, Class, America

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

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• The only truly new ideas [the right] has come up with in the last twenty years are (1) supply side economics, which is a way of redistributing the wealth upward toward those who already have more than they know what to do with, and (2) creationism, which is a parallel idea for redistributing ignorance out from its fundamentalist strongholds to those who know more than they need to.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Ignorance, Years, Ideas

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

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• Americans love marriage too much. We rush into mariage with abandon, expecting a micro-Utopia on earth. We pile all our needs onto it, our expectations, neuroses, and hopes. In fact, we've made marriage into the panda bear of human social institutions: we've loved it to death.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Expectations, Needs, Pandas

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• Well, the first thing that clued me in to the fact that there was something really scary about breast cancer, way beyond the thought of dying, was coming across an ad in the newspaper for pink breast cancer teddy bears. I am not that afraid of dying, but I am terrified of dying with a pink teddy bear under my arm.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Cancer, Scary, Dying

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• If that's how it all started, then we might as well face the fact that what's left out there is a great deal of shrapnel and a whole bunch of cinders (one of which is, fortunately, still hot enough and close enough to be good for tanning). Trying to find some sense and order in this mess may be as futile as trying to ... reconstruct the economy of Iowa from a bowl of popcorn. [On searching for evidence of the Big Bang.]

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Science, Order, Iowa

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

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