Women Activists From The United States

"Blatant or subtle, pornography involves no equal power or mutuality. In fact, much of the tension and drama comes from the clear idea that one person is dominating the other."

"Erotica is as different from pornography as love is from rape, as dignity is from humiliation, as partnership is from slavery, as pleasure is from pain."

"I have met brave women who are exploring the outer edge of human possibility, with no history to guide them, and the courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words."

"Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood."

"This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen, or those earned. We are really talking about humanism."

"What will exist is a variety of alternative life-styles. Since the population explosion dictates that childbearing be kept to a minimum, parents-and-children will be only one of many "families": couples, age groups, working groups, mixed communes, blood-related clans, class groups, creative groups. Single women will have the right to stay single without ridicule, without the attitudes now betrayed by "spinster" and "bachelor." Lesbians or homosexuals will no longer be denied legally binding marriages, complete with mutual-support agreements and inheritance rights. Paradoxically, the number of homosexuals may get smaller. With fewer over-possessive mothers and fewer fathers who hold up an impossibly cruel or perfectionist idea of manhood, boys will be less likely to be denied or reject their identity as males."

"Redundancy is expensive but indispensable."

"In wretched outcomes, the devil is in the details."

"Advanced cultures are usually sophisticated enough, or have been sophisticated enough at some point in their pasts, to realize that foxes shouldn't be relied on to guard henhouses."

"Virtually all ideologues, of any variety, are fearful and insecure, which is why they are drawn to ideologies that promise prefabricated answers for all circumstances."

"Subsidiarity is the principle that government works best — most responsibly and responsively — when it is closest to the people it serves and the needs it addresses. Fiscal accountability is the principle that institutions collecting and disbursing taxes work most responsibly when they are transparent to those providing the money."

"One wonders at the docility of the students who evidently must be satisfied enough with the credentials to be uncaring about the lack of education."

"To science, not even the bark of a tree or a drop of pond water is dull or a handful of dirt banal. They all arouse awe and wonder."

"Credentialing, not education, has become the primary business of North American universities."

"While politicians, clergy, creators of advertisements, and other worthies assert stoutly that the family is the foundation of society, the nuclear family, as an institution, is currently in grave trouble."

"Writing, printing, and the Internet give a false sense of security about the permanence of culture."

"The salient mystery of Dark Ages sets the stage for mass amnesia. People living in vigorous cultures typically treasure those cultures and resist any threat to them. How and why can a people so totally discard a formerly vital culture that it becomes vitally lost?"

"This is both a gloomy and a hopeful book. The subject itself is gloomy. A Dark Age is a culture's dead end. We in North America and Western Europe, enjoying the many benefits of the culture conventionally known as the West, customarily think of a Dark Age as happening once, long ago, following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. But in North America we live in a graveyard of lost aboriginal cultures, many of which were decisively finished off by mass amnesia in which even the memory of what was lost was also lost. Throughout the world Dark Ages have scrawled finis to successions of cultures receding far into the past."

"As for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings."

"A region is an area safely larger than the last one to whose problems we found no solution."

"It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we no longer care how things do work, but only what kind of quick, easy outer impression they give. If so, there is little hope for our cities or probably for much else in our society. But I do not think this is so."

"Great cities are not like towns, only larger. They are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of them is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers."

"The other threat to the security of our tradition, I believe, lies at home. It is the current fear of radical ideas and of people who propound them. I do not agree with the extremists of either the left or the right, but I think they should be allowed to speak and to publish, both because they themselves have, and ought to have, rights, and once their rights are gone, the rights of the rest of us are hardly safe. Extremists typically want to squash not only those who disagree with them diametrically, but those who disagree with them at all. It seems to me that in every country where extremists of the left have gotten sufficiently in the saddle to squash the extremists of the right, they have ridden on to squash the center or terrorize it also. And the same goes for extremists of the right. I do not want that to happen in our country."

"We must demonstrate that it is possible to overcome poverty, misery and decay by democratic means, and we must ourselves believe, and must show others, that our American tradition of the dignity and liberty of the individual is not a luxury for easy times but is the basic source of the strength and security of a successful society."

"I was taught that the American's right to be a free individual, not at the mercy of the state, was hard-won and that its price was eternal vigilance, that I too would have to be vigilant. I was made to feel that it would be a disgrace to me, as an individual, if I should not value or should give up rights that were dearly bought. I am grateful for that upbringing."

"I was brought up to believe that there is no virtue in conforming meekly to the dominant opinion of the moment. I was encouraged to believe that simple conformity results in stagnation for a society, and that American progress has been largely owing to the opportunity for experimentation, the leeway given initiative, and to a gusto and a freedom for chewing over odd ideas."

"I did have an inkling that I was going to be a writer. That was my intention."

"I would spend a nickel on the subway and go arbitrarily to some other stop and look around there. So I was roaming the city in the afternoons and applying for jobs in the morning. And one day I found myself in a neighborhood I just liked so much…it was one of those times I had put a nickel in and just invested something. And where did I get out? I just liked the sound of the name: Christopher Street — so I got out at Christopher Street, and I was enchanted with this neighborhood, and walked around it all afternoon and then I rushed back to Brooklyn. And I said, "Betty I found out where we have to live.""

"Jacobs has never been political in the sense of supporting one ideology or party over another. Larger ideologies, she firmly believed then and continues to believe, only obscure the realities, which are to be found by looking around, paying attention, and trusting your eyes over what people are merely saying. In that spirit, she always supported the right of labor unions and grass roots movements to exist. "I think it is good for us to have vociferous political minorities and to know how to live with them," she wrote. But her personal support of any individual cause was always based on her absolutely unbending principles."

"Privately run jails are a mark of American "reinvented government" that has been picked up by neoconservatives in Canada."

"I have learned yet again (this has been going on all my life) what folly it is to take any thing for granted without examining it skeptically."

"Beneficent spirals, operating by benign feedback, mean that everything needful is not required at once: each individual improvement is beneficial for the whole"

"When you're down and troubled And you need some loving care And nothing, nothing is going right. Close your eyes and think of me And soon I will be there To brighten up even your darkest nights."

"Way over yonder, that's where I'm bound."

"Way over yonder is a place I have seen In a garden of wisdom from some long ago dream."

"If there's any answer, maybe love can end the madness Maybe not, oh, but we can only try."

"You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face And show the world all the love in your heart The people gonna treat you better, You're gonna find, yes you will, That you're beautiful as you feel."

"So far away Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore? It would be so fine to see your face at my door. Doesn't help to know you're so far away."

"I feel the earth move under my feet I feel the sky tumbling down — tumbling down I feel my heart start to trembling Whenever you're around."

"Gotta make you love me the way you used to do Gotta get back the feeling and put wind in my sails And chart a course that gets me back to you, back to you. Oh, the lonely days, the lonely nights lookin' back in time. Time, don't run out on me."

"The local rock group down the street Is trying hard to learn their song. They serenade the weekend squire Who just came out to mow his lawn. Another pleasant valley Sunday. Charcoal burning everywhere. Rows of houses that are all the same. And no one seems to care."

"When my soul was in the lost and found, You came along to claim it. I didn't know just what was wrong with me Till your kiss helped me name it. Now I'm no longer doubtful of what I'm living for, Cause if I make you happy I don't need to do more."

"Looking out on the morning rain, I used to feel so uninspired. And when I knew I had to face another day, Lord, it made me feel so tired. Before the day I met you, life was so unkind. Your love was the key to my peace of mind.'Cause you make me feel. You make me feel, You make me feel like A natural woman (woman)."

"In the midst of all my darkness, baby You came along to guide me. You took pity on a lonely man When you said you'd stand beside me. I'll never forget you Or what you've done. I'll never turn my back on you for anyone.I've got so much love to give you. Baby, I've got so much love to give you. Girl, there's more than enough to last a whole life through, And it's all for you."

"I think I'm going back To the things I learned so well In my youth. I think I'm returning to The days when I was young enough To know the truth."

"There's alot of things I want, a lot of things that I'd like to be. But girl, I don't foresee a rags-to-riches story for me. There's just one little dream I've got to come true; There's just one round I've gotta win, I can't be a loser with you. Baby, baby, once in my life, let me get what I want, Girl, don't let me down! Just once in my life, let me hold on to one good thing I found!"

"When my friends told me you had someone new I didn't believe a single word was true. I showed them all I had a faith in you I just kept on sayingOh, no, not my baby Oh, no, not my sweet baby You're not like those other guys Who lead you on and tell you lies."

"He gets up each morning and he goes downtown Where everyone's his boss, And he's lost in an angry land. He's a little man. But then he comes uptown Each evening to my tenement. Uptown where folks don't have to pay much rent. And when he's there with me. He can see that he's everything. The man is tall, he don't crawl. He's a king."

"One fine day, you'll look at me And you will know our love was, meant to be. One fine day, you're gonna want me for your girl."

"Hey girl I want you to know I'm gonna miss you so much if you go. And hey girl I tell you no lie, Something deep inside of me's going to die If you say so long, if this is goodbye."