Florynce Kennedy Quotes

66 Sourced Quotes

I think we should look forward to death more than we do. Of course everybody hates to go to bed or miss anything, but dying is really the only chance we'll get to rest.

Florynce Kennedy
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.

Florynce Kennedy
As the struggle intensifies, the oppressor tends to pick more attractive agents — frequently from among the oppressed.

Florynce Kennedy
The spending of our tax dollars by the Pentagon represents the greatest social disease of our country; I call it Pentagonorrhea.

Florynce Kennedy
Niggerization is the result of oppression — and it doesn't just apply to black people. Old people, poor people, and students can also get niggerized. Sure, there are differences in degree, but we've got to stop comparing wounds and go out after the system that does the wounding.

Florynce Kennedy
Okay, roses are beautiful, fragrant, and desirable. But how much shit should you have to walk over to get one rose?

Florynce Kennedy
If you've been hit a lot, you tend to stay sore for a while. Trying to help an oppressed person is like trying to put your arm around somebody with a sunburn.

Florynce Kennedy
We ought to give the Pentagon budget to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and the HEW budget to the Pentagon. Then we'd have enough money to cure cancer and sickle-cell anemia and muscular dystrophy, and we'd only have telethons for Pentagonorrhea.

Florynce Kennedy
If you're lying in a ditch with a truck on your ankle, you don't send somebody to the library to find out how much the truck weighs. You get the truck off.

Florynce Kennedy
Women who say they're contented just having a nice husband and two beautiful children — fine; I'm glad. Of course, I always wonder what happens if one of the children isn't beautiful... and if the housework is so rewarding, why don't men do it, too? But this Movement isn't about getting some woman to leave her husband. It's about social justice.

Florynce Kennedy
You don't cure malaria by getting in bed with the malaria patient, and you don't cure poverty by going to live in the ghetto. You go to Wall Street and Washington and put pressure on the people who've got the cure.

Florynce Kennedy
When you want to get to the suites, start in the streets.
Her rule for political activism

Florynce Kennedy
Take a look at your local Weird Herald. On the Woman's Page, are they telling you how to make aprons out of artichokes and artichokes out of aprons? Well, protest! Picket! And if that doesn't work, try boycotting their biggest advertiser. That should turn the trick.

Florynce Kennedy
The question arises whether all lawyers are the same. This is like asking whether everything that gets into a sewer is garbage.

Florynce Kennedy
When you spit on someone at a cocktail party, you don't want to drown him. You just want to let him know you don't like him.

Florynce Kennedy
Just because you're not feeling sick doesn't mean you should close the hospitals.

Florynce Kennedy
Women have at least three kinds of power: Dollar Power, to boycott with; Vote Power, to take over structures with, and maybe even get somebody elected; and Body Power, to get out and support our friends and make a damned nuisance of ourselves with everybody else.

Florynce Kennedy
Here I am a woman attorney being told I can't practice law in slacks by a judge dressed in drag.

Florynce Kennedy
Now, see there. Just because I'm wearing my Super-Dike sweatshirt, you think I'm a lesbian. I guess if I were wearing a string of pearls, you'd think I was an oyster.

Florynce Kennedy
We criticize each other instead of the oppressor because it's less dangerous. The oppressor fights back.

Florynce Kennedy
Unity in a Movement situation can be overrated. If you were the Establishment, which would you rather see coming in the door: one lion or five hundred mice?

Florynce Kennedy
Every form of bigotry can be found in ample supply in the legal system of our country.

Florynce Kennedy
Most people are not taught to understand that the two o'clock orgasm leads to the three o'clock feeding.

Florynce Kennedy
I'm just a loud-mouthed middle-aged colored lady with a fused spine and three feet of intestines missing and a lot of people think I'm crazy. Maybe you do too, but I never stop to wonder why I'm not like other people. The mystery to me is why more people aren't like me.

Florynce Kennedy
In a rape situation, a jury can be made to believe a woman almost invites rape when she's wearing tight pants or jeans, whereas a man in an expensive coat doesn't suggest he should be mugged, and wearing a diamond doesn't mean you are inviting robbery.

Florynce Kennedy
If the ass is protecting the system, ass-kicking should be undertaken regardless of the sex, ethnicity, or charm of the ass involved.

Florynce Kennedy
They call us militants, but General Westmoreland, General Abrams, General Motors and General Dynamics — they're the real militants. We don't even have a helicopter.

Florynce Kennedy
People always ask if a woman can be a wife and mother and have a career at the same time. Why don't they ask if she can be a hostess, chauffeur, cook, gardener, nurse, seamstress, social secretary, purchasing agent, baby machine, and courtesan — and a wife and a mother too?

Florynce Kennedy
Freedom is like taking a bath: You got to keep doing it every day.

Florynce Kennedy
In the name of elitism, we do a crabs-in-a-barrel number, and pull down any of our number who get public attention or a small success. As long as we're into piranha-ism and horizontal hostility, honey, we ain't going to get nowhere.

Florynce Kennedy