"Women have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio training or expensive materials. But in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and paper. Male conspiracy cannot explain all female failures. I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant. Genius is not checked by social obstacles: it will overcome. Men's egotism, so disgusting in the talentless, is the source of their greatness as a sex. [...] Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species."
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Educators from the United StatesFree speech activistsWomen academics from the United StatesFeminists from the United StatesJournalists from New York (state)
Original Language: English
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p. 653
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Camille_Paglia
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Camille Paglia
art historian, writer, literary critic
1947 · United States
338 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Camille Paglia →
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