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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.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Considering the absence of legal coercion, the surprising thing is that men have for so long, and, on the whole, so reliably, adhered to what we might call the breadwinner ethic.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Coercion Long Men
I think it’s tragic that we have this human capacity, which appears to be hardwired, or so the evolutionary biologists say, for collective joy. We have these techniques for generating it that go back thousands of years, and yet we tend not to use this.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Biological Joy Say Thinking Years
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

Atheism Done Evidence God
To be homeless in America is to live like a fugitive. The destitute are our own native-born “illegals.”
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Born Country Homeless
There is the fear, common to all English-only speakers, that the chief purpose of foreign languages is to make fun of us. Otherwise, you know, why not just come out and say it?
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Fun Language Purpose Speaker
Labor 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 EHRENREICH

Leader Motherhood Work
Experimental 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 EHRENREICH

Experimental People Science Want
The urge to transform one’s appearance, to dance outdoors, to mock the powerful and embrace perfect strangers is not easy to suppress.” –Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets, 260.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Dancing Perfect Powerful
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.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

People Roles Unique
That’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 EHRENREICH

Blue Eye Lovely
It’s a glorious universe the positive thinkers have come up with, a vast, shimmering aurora borealis in which desires mingle freely with their realizations. … Dreams go out and fulfill themselves; wishes need only to be articulated.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Dream Optimism Thinking
Yes. I think the anti-Wal-Mart is Costco, which pays much better and has much better health benefits and which is profitable and offers low prices.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Benefits Pay Thinking
Exercise is the yuppie version of bulimia.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Exercise Fitness Health
The internet was supposed to make this whole business of job searching rational and simple. You could post your resume and companies would search them and they’d find you. It doesn’t seem to work that way. There aren’t enough jobs for experienced, college educated managers and professionals.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

College Jobs Simple
The one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Abortion Kids Regret
Upscale young men seem to go for the kind of woman who plays with a full deck of credit cards.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Cards Men Play

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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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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