I’m not a nice person.
BARBARA EHRENREICHImagine spending four billion years stocking the oceans with seafood, filling the ground with fossil fuels, and drilling the bees in honey production – only to produce a race of bed-wetters!
More Barbara Ehrenreich Quotes
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At 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.
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A lot of what we experience as strength comes from knowing what to do with weakness. Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America
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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.
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Transcendent Oneness does not require self-examination, self-help, or self-work. It requires self-loss.
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You 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.
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war 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.
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For a long time on Earth humans didn’t worship good gods; that’s a new idea. The ancient Greek gods, the Hindu gods, are fairly amoral, most of them. We get stuck when we insist that God be both good and all-powerful.
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There’s more pressure on women to be chirpy and perky.
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Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own Ronald Reagan.
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Cheerfulness, up to and including delusion and false hope, has a recognized place in medicine.
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Some people make stuff; other people have to buy it. And when we gave up making stuff, starting in the 1980s, we were left with the unique role of buying… We’ve shopped till we dropped alright, face down on the floor.
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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?
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It’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.
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The Republicans hardly need a party and the cumbersome cadre of low-level officials that form one; they have a bankroll as large as the Pentagon’s budget, dozens of fatted PACs, and the well-advertised support of the Christian deity.
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If there is no God or no evidence of God and certainly no evidence of a very morally engaged god, then whatever has to be done has to be done by us.
BARBARA EHRENREICH