black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

There is a reason why America produced the most vigorous feminist movement in the world: We were one of the only countries in which the middle class (which is wealthy by world standards) customarily employed its own women as domestic servants.

Barbara Ehrenreich

I’m not a nice person.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Nice Person Oversmart Think
Consider the standard two-person married couple. … They will share a VCR, a microwave, etc. This is not a matter of ideology or even personal inclination. It is practically the definition of marriage. Marriage is socialism among two people.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Couple Ideology Married Two
Anyone who has invented a better mousetrap, or the contemporary equivalent, can expect to be harassed by strangers demanding that you read their unpublished manuscripts or undergo the humiliation of public speaking, usually on remote Midwestern campuses.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Innovation Public Speaking Stranger
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
But our culture is in truly bad shape if we have come to define respecting something as the failure to set it on fire.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Culture Fire Shapes
For the millions of us who live glued to computer keyboards at work and TV monitors at home, food may be more than entertainment. It may be the only sensual experience left.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Food Home Sensual
It was a real surprise to me to come across the evidence that Christianity might once have been a danced religion. Certainly, some of the early church leaders thought this was great and spoke of what seems to have been circle dancing, perhaps around an altar.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Circles Dancing Real
The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Circles Overcoming Snakes
no job, no matter how lowly, is truly ‘unskilled.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Jobs Matter Work
in our culture, the professional, and largely white, middle class is taken as a social norm – a bland and neutral mainstream – from which every other group or class is ultimately a kind of deviation.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Class Taken White
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
Every time a bank swoops down to snatch up a home, it should be met with a crowd of jeering, obstructive neighbors. And although this may be point 4.5, how about organizing a mass refusal to pay back student loans?
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Bank Crowd Home Neighbour Swoop
So even though I consider myself a fairly upbeat person, energetic and things like that, I never do very well on happiness tests.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Energetic Happiness Test Upbeat
When I was born, my father was a copper miner in Butte, Montana. It was a hard-core, blue-collar situation.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Blue Father Montana
Marriage is socialism among two people.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Eugenics Marriage Two
… there hasn’t been a serious life-style trend since the couch potato was sighted, in about 1986, on one of its rare forays to the video store. Cocooning remains a significant mass enterprise, encouraged by the availability of five hundred new cable channels and microwavable popcorn.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Availability Popcorn Style

There is a reason why America produced the most vigorous feminist movement in the world: We were one of the only countries in which the middle class (which is wealthy by world standards) customarily employed its own women as domestic servants.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

There is a reason why America produced the most vigorous feminist movement in the world: We were one of the only countries in which the middle class (which is wealthy by world standards) customarily employed its own women as domestic servants.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Ehrenreich Quotes