Germaine Greer Quotes - Page 3

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• No one goes to the toilet in novels. You'd think none of us had bladders.

  Germaine Greer

  Thinking, Toilets, Bladder

  "Newsnight Review", July 24, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• The only perfect love to be found on earth is not sexual love, which is riddled with hostility and insecurity, but the wordless commitment of families, which takes as its model mother-love. This is not to say that fathers have no place, for father-love, with its driving for self-improvement and discipline, is also essential to survival, but that uncorrected father-love, father-love as it were practiced by both parents, is a way to annihilation.

  Germaine Greer

  Love, Mother, Father

  Germaine Greer (1990). “The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings”, p.26, Atlantic Monthly Press

  4 Copy quote

• We can put women on Prozac and they will think they are happy, even though they are not. Disturbed animals in the zoo are given Prozac too, which rather suggests that misery is a response to unbearable circumstances rather than constitutional.

  Germaine Greer

  Zoos, Thinking, Animal

  "The Whole Woman". Book by Germaine Greer, 1999.

  20 Copy quote

• The tragedy of machismo is that a man is never quite man enough.

  Germaine Greer

  Men, Tragedy, Never Quit

  Germaine Greer (1990). “The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings”, p.80, Atlantic Monthly Press

  103 Copy quote

• We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children.

  Germaine Greer

  Children, West, Population

  Germaine Greer (1985). “Sex and destiny: the politics of human fertility”

  14 Copy quote

• Common morality now treats childbearing as an aberration. There are practically no good reasons left for exercising one's fertility.

  Germaine Greer

  Children, Exercise, Fertility

  Germaine Greer (1985). “Sex and destiny: the politics of human fertility”

  5 Copy quote

• Every human body has its optimum weight and contour, which only health and efficiency can establish. Whenever we treat women's bodies as aesthetic objects without function we deform them.

  Germaine Greer

  Weight, Body, Efficiency

  Germaine Greer (2009). “The Female Eunuch”, p.35, Harper Collins

  9 Copy quote

• Poetry exists partly to undermine the certainties of an accepted intellectual system, by opening a fissure of awareness at which the reality of the unconquered world may enter.

  Germaine Greer

  Art, Reality, Poetry

  Germaine Greer (1995). “Slip-shod sibyls: recognition, rejection and the woman poet”, Viking Pr

  11 Copy quote

• The pain of sexual frustration, of repressed tenderness, of denied curiosity, of isolation in the ego, of greed, suppressed rebellion, of hatred poisoning all love and generosity, permeates our sexuality. What we love we destroy.

  Germaine Greer

  Pain, Frustration, Generosity

  Germaine Greer (1990). “The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings”, p.57, Atlantic Monthly Press

  13 Copy quote

• The fear of freedom is strong in us. We call it chaos or anarchy, and the words are threatening. We live in a true chaos of contradicting authorities, an age of conformism without community, of proximity without communication. We could only fear chaos if we imagined that it was unknown to us, but in fact we know it very well.

  Germaine Greer

  Strong, Communication, Community

  Germaine Greer (2009). “The Female Eunuch”, p.20, Harper Collins

  8 Copy quote

• War is the admission of defeat in the face of conflicting interests: by war the issue is left to chance, and the tacit assumption that the best man will win is not at all justified. It might equally be argued that the worst, the most unscrupulous man will win, although history will continue the absurd game by finding him after all the best man.

  Germaine Greer

  War, Winning, Men

  Germaine Greer (1972). “The female eunuch”

  5 Copy quote

• The blind conviction that we have to do something about other people's reproductive behavior, and that we may have to do it whether they like it or not, derives from the assumption that the world belongs to us, who have so expertly depleted its resources, rather than to them, who have not.

  Germaine Greer

  People, World, May

  5 Copy quote

• Psychoanalysis is the confession without absolution.

  Germaine Greer

  Confession, Psychoanalysis, Absolution

  13 Copy quote

• If women understand by emancipation the adoption of the masculine role then we are lost indeed. If women can supply no counterbalance to the blindness of male drive the aggressive society will run to its lunatic extremes at ever-escalating speed. Who will safeguard the despised animal faculties of compassion, empathy, innocence and sensuality?

  Germaine Greer

  Running, Compassion, Animal

  Germaine Greer (1972). “The female eunuch”

  7 Copy quote

• All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man; no society will survive a shortage of women.

  Germaine Greer

  Death, Women, Independent

  Germaine Greer (1985). “Sex and destiny: the politics of human fertility”

  9 Copy quote

• Mother is the dead heart of the family spending father's earnings on consumer goods to enhance the environment in which he eats, sleeps, and watches the television.

  Germaine Greer

  Family, Mother, Father

  Germaine Greer (1972). “The female eunuch”

  10 Copy quote

• Awareness of time as flying has some advantages; it precludes boredom, for one thing. It matters little that younger people find older people boring or slow. Older people have a right to resist being rushed, to stand and stare at the fragile world that has become so unspeakably dear to them. For the lucky ones, who will not have to leave while they are still in love with life, there will come a later time when that passion too will fade, but while one is still possessed by that great tenderness, it must be yielded to.

  Germaine Greer

  Passion, Love Life, People

  4 Copy quote

• Man made one grave mistake: in answer to vaguely reformist and humanitarian agitation he admitted women to politics and the professions. The conservatives who saw this as the undermining of our civilisation and the end of the state and marriage were right after all; it is time for the demolition to begin.

  Germaine Greer

  Mistake, Women, Agitation

  germaine greer (1971). “the female eunuch”

  63 Copy quote

• If a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got?

  Germaine Greer

  Might, Know How, Knows

  5 Copy quote

• It's absolutely philistine not to recognize what a great book 'An American Dream' is. Norman Mailer is his own worst enemy, and if you don't catch him in a defensive position, he'll admit it. I'd really like to help that man.

  Germaine Greer

  Dream, Book, Men

  5 Copy quote

• Bras are a ludicrous invention; but if you make bralessness a rule, you're just subjecting yourself to yet another repression.

  Germaine Greer

  Invention, Bras, Repression

  9 Copy quote

• Despite a lifetime of service to the cause of sexual liberation, I have never caught venereal disease, which makes me feel rather like an Arctic explorer who has never had frostbite.

  Germaine Greer

  Funny, Sex, Humor

  4 Copy quote

• The most unpardonable privilege that men enjoy is their magnanimity.

  Germaine Greer

  Men, Privilege, Enjoy

  "The Madwoman's Underclothes". Book by Germaine Greer, 1986.

  4 Copy quote

• Rather than seek to be squired and dated by their rivals why should it not be possible for women to find relaxation and pleasure in the company of their 'inferiors'? They would need to shed their desperate need to admire a man, and accept the gentler role of loving him. A learned woman cannot castrate a truck-driver like she can her intellectual rival, because he has no exaggerated respect for her bookish capacities. The alternative to conventional education is not stupidity, and many a clever girl needs the corrective of a humbler soul's genuine wisdom.

  Germaine Greer

  Girl, Clever, Men

  Germaine Greer (1972). “The female eunuch”

  5 Copy quote

• Perhaps women have always been in closer contact with reality than men: it would seem to be the just recompense for being deprived of idealism.

  Germaine Greer

  Women, Reality, Deviousness

  Germaine Greer (1972). “The female eunuch”

  26 Copy quote

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