Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don’t happen to think it’s an appropriate subject for an ‘ethic.’
BARBARA EHRENREICHPersonally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don’t happen to think it’s an appropriate subject for an ‘ethic.’
BARBARA EHRENREICHThe fact is that heterosexual sex for most people is in no way free of the power relations between men and women.
BARBARA EHRENREICHExperimental science is fascinating, but I don’t want to do it. I want other people to do it, and I’ll read about it.
BARBARA EHRENREICHWhenever people can access deities directly without the intervention of a religious hierarchy, they don’t need to have hierarchy so much.
BARBARA EHRENREICHRacist, sexist, and homophobic thoughts cannot, alas, be abolished by fiat but only by the time-honored methods of persuasion, education and exposure to the other guy’s-or excuse me, woman’s-point of view.
BARBARA EHRENREICHThat’s the really neat thing about Dan Quayle, as you must have realized from the first moment you looked into those lovely blue eyes: impeachment insurance.
BARBARA EHRENREICHPeople tend to judge presidents on how the economy performs, and yet we don’t expect them to have the power to do much about it. Or we don’t want them to exercise that power, if they were to have it.
BARBARA EHRENREICHIt is the marketplace that calls most clearly for men to be softer, more narcissistic and receptive, and the new man is the result.
BARBARA EHRENREICHwar has dug itself into economic systems, where it offers a livelihood to millions … It has lodged in our souls as a kind of religion, a quick tonic for political malaise and a bracing antidote to the moral torpor of consumerist, market-driven cultures.
BARBARA EHRENREICHYou can turn away the Mexicans, the African-Americans, the teenagers and other suspect groups, but there’s no fence high enough to keep out the repo man.
BARBARA EHRENREICHWhen 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 EHRENREICHLabor is like motherhood to most of our political leaders: a calling so fine and noble that it would be sullied by talk of vulgar, mundane things like pay.
BARBARA EHRENREICHIt’s even occurred to me, as a teeny little subversive whisper of a thought, that if we stop mowing the lawn right now, it will probably be a long, long time before the yard gets overrun by lions and snakes.
BARBARA EHRENREICHMedical debts are the number-one cause of bankruptcy in America.
BARBARA EHRENREICHAt best the family teaches the finest things human beings can learn from one another generosity and love. But it is also, all too often, where we learn nasty things like hate, rage and shame.
BARBARA EHRENREICHI complain to one of my fellow servers that I don’t understand how she can go so long without food. “Well, I don’t understand how you can go so long without a cigarette,” she responds in a tone of reproach. Because work is what you do for others; smoking is what you do for yourself.
BARBARA EHRENREICH