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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
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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
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What would it mean in practice to eliminate all the 'negative people' from one's life [as demanded by motivational speaker J.P. Maroney]? It might be a good idea to separate from a chronically carping spouse, but it is not so easy to abandon the whiny toddler, the colicky infant, or the sullen teenager.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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The 'working poor,' as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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Middle-class-led reform movements, from the Progressive Era to the War on Poverty, have been marred by an elitist distance from the would-be beneficiaries of reform.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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A child is a temporarily disabled and stunted version of a larger person, whom you will someday know. Your job is to help them overcome the disabilities associated with their size and in- experience so that they get on with being that larger person, and in a form that you might like to know.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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What you don't necessarily realize when you start selling your time by the hour is that what you're really selling is your life.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shite fundamentalists.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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You still don't like the idea of gay marriage? Then, as my friend the economist Julianne Malveaux says: Don't marry a gay person. Case closed, problem solved.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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Some of us still get all weepy when we think about the Gaia Hypothesis, the idea that earth is a big furry goddess-creature who resembles everybody's mom in that she knows what's best for us. But if you look at the historical record - Krakatoa, Mt. Vesuvius, Hurricane Charley, poison ivy, and so forth down the ages - you have to ask yourself: Whose side is she on, anyway?
Barbara Ehrenreich
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We are reaching the point, if we have not passed it already, where the largest public housing program in America will be our penitentiary system.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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Human intellectual progress, such as it has been, results from our long struggle to see things 'as they are,' or in the most universally comprehensive way, and not as projections of our own emotions. Thunder is not a tantrum in the sky, disease is not a divine punishment, and not every death or accident results from witchcraft.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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Bullying, like water, flows downhill. Busboys don't bully maitre d's.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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Surely there must be some way to find a husband or, for that matter, merely an escort, without sacrificing one's privacy, self-respect, and interior decorating scheme. For example, men could be imported from the developing countries, many parts of which are suffering from a man excess, at least in relation to local food supply.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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At Wal-Mart, a co-worker once advised me that, although I had a lot to learn, it was also important not to "know too much," or at least never to reveal one's full abilities to management, because "the more they think you can do, the more they'll use you and abuse you." My mentors in these matters were not lazy; they just understood that there are few or no rewards for heroic performance. The trick lies in figuring out how to budget your energy so there'll be some left over for the next day.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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Transcendent Oneness does not require self-examination, self-help, or self-work. It requires self-loss.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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How can we expect to improve our situation without addressing the actual circumstances we find ourselves in? Positive thinking seeks to convince us that such external factors are incidental compared with one's internal state or attitude or mood.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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Marriage probably originated as a straightforward food-for-sex deal among foraging primates. Compatibility was not a big issue, nor, of course, was there any tension over who would control the remote.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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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
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A whole industry has grown up to promote positive thinking, and the product of this industry, available at a wide range of prices, is called motivation.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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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
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Historians differ on when the consumer culture came to dominate American culture. Some say it was in the twenties, when advertising became a major industry and the middle class bought radios to hear the ads and cars to get to the stores.... But there is no question that the consumer culture had begun to crowd out all other cultural possibilities by the years following World War II.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles...bot h of our own making and imposed by the natural world. And the first step is to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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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).
Barbara Ehrenreich
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From an entertainment point of view, the Solar System has been a bust. None of the planets turns out to have any real-estate potential, and most of them are probably even useless for filming Dune sequels.
Barbara Ehrenreich
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Quote of the day
Joy is like restless day; but peace divine Like quiet night; Lead me, O Lord, — till perfect Day shall shine Through Peace to Light.
Adelaide Anne Procter
Barbara Ehrenreich
Creative Commons
Born:
August 26, 1941
Died:
September 1, 2022
(aged 81)
Bio:
Barbara Ehrenreich was an American author and political activist who described herself as "a myth buster by trade", and was called "a veteran muckraker" by The New Yorker.
Known for:
Nickel and Dimed (2001)
Bait and Switch (2006)
Dancing in the Streets (2006)
Most used words:
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class
people
work
poverty
america
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self
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human
life
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