Florynce Kennedy Quotes

66 Sourced Quotes

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
Unless you are political or intellectual, events like the Depression are seen as personal events. We thought of the Depression as something that made the pipes freeze; we thought it hit us because Daddy didn't move his taxi stand and because he broke his hip. It was only later I found out it was a national phenomenon.

Florynce Kennedy
I may seem radical, but I'm not. I'm just a worm, turning.

Florynce Kennedy
You get a hundred dollars a week for filing, and a hundred dollars a night for fucking, but you don't get nuthin' for filing, and fucking, and cleaning, and cooking, and washing, and ironing, and chauffering, and nursing, and sewing, and.

Florynce Kennedy
There's a difference between Vaselining the rapee and catching the rapist.

Florynce Kennedy
It's interesting to speculate how it developed that in two of the most anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are wearing the dresses.

Florynce Kennedy
At my age and in my condition, I'm going to do what I want — I haven't got time for anything else.

Florynce Kennedy
Going in and out of a closet, your mind is on what you really want in there. But the minute the door locks, all you want is out.

Florynce Kennedy
If you've had a broken leg, you don't get up and win the Olympics. The first step is to get out of bed.

Florynce Kennedy
When we first moved to Kansas City, some Ku Klux Klansmen gave us ten minutes to get out of the neighborhood. My father went out with a shotgun and said. 'I'll shoot the first man who steps on this porch. After that, you can get me.' And you know, those Klansmen never came back?

Florynce Kennedy
A liberation struggle is like a struggle against dirt. No matter what type of bath you take... in three weeks you'll smell like you've never seen a bathtub. What we don't understand about a liberation struggle is you never win it, any more than you "win" clean dishes. As soon as you eat on them, the dishes are dirty again.

Florynce Kennedy
Although they tell you you are most beautiful when you're pregnant, all the models who epitomize beauty have skinny waistlines. So they're shitting you right from the start.

Florynce Kennedy
Oppressed people are frequently very oppressive when first liberated. And why wouldn't they be? They know best two positions. Somebody's foot on their neck or their foot on somebody's neck.

Florynce Kennedy
Prostitutes are accused even by feminists of selling their bodies; but prostitutes don't sell their bodies, they rent their bodies. Housewives sell their bodies when they get married.

Florynce Kennedy
There are very few jobs that actually require a penis or vagina. All other jobs should be open to everybody.

Florynce Kennedy
Tobacco kills 52,000 people a year from lung cancer, and there's no telling how many lives have been ruined through drinking. But to my knowledge, no one has ever died of a blow job.

Florynce Kennedy
The draft is very new in this country, and a lot of people want to eliminate it. But as soon as women start talking about their rights, somebody says they should get drafted. It's as if men are saying, "If you don't let me hold the door open for you, I'll slam it on your hand.

Florynce Kennedy
There's no way that I know of to avoid pain absolutely, but suffering is the interpretation we choose to place on the pain we encounter.

Florynce Kennedy
Loserism is when oppressed people sit around and think up reasons why they can't do something. Well just do it. Thinking up reasons why you can't is the Establishment's job.

Florynce Kennedy
Horizontal hostility may be expressed in sibling rivalry or in competitive dueling which wrecks not only office tranquility or suburban domesticity but also some radical political groups and, it must be sadly said, some women's liberation groups.... [it is] misdirected anger that rightly should be focused on the external causes of oppression.

Florynce Kennedy
We don't say a word when Madison Avenue makes millions off us, but we get all resentful and suspicious when somebody in the Movement gets attention or makes a dime.That's Nigger Nobility. If you have to lose to prove you're a good person, we won't get anywhere.

Florynce Kennedy
What you must understand is oppression does not end with the niggers. It does not end with the poor people, it doesn't end with the women, or the pregnant women. It goes on up the line to the executive who has his bag searched in the airport.

Florynce Kennedy
You've got to rattle your cage door. You've got to let them know that you're in there, and that you want out. Make noise. Cause trouble. You may not win right away, but you'll sure have a lot more fun.

Florynce Kennedy
Being a mother is a noble status, right? Right. So why does it change when you put 'unwed' or 'welfare' in front of it?

Florynce Kennedy
Anybody with the brains and energy to become a teacher ought to want to become something better.

Florynce Kennedy
In a jockocratic society, you can turn on the TV and find out the score of some basketball game in Alaska — but you can't find out how many states have ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. You can turn on the radio, and hear every score in the country repeated all day long — but you don't hear how many women died from illegal abortions.

Florynce Kennedy
I don't practice law much anymore. Even if you're honest, the law is still a one-ass-at-a-time proposition — and what we have to do is stop the wringer.

Florynce Kennedy