Quote

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.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Barbara Ehrenreich
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: August 26
American Political Figure
Essayist
Historian
Immunologist
Journalist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Peace Activist
Politician
Writer
Butte
Montana
Politics
Mature
Seaman
State
Heads
Minh
Pain
Ill
Seamen
States
Landscape
Notoriously
Think
Painter
Adolf
Thinking
Politician
Ronald
Prepared
Reagan
Careers
Hitler

More quotes by Barbara Ehrenreich

Image
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
Image
Even when uttered by Democrats, middle class often sounds like a mealymouthed way of saying, Us, and not them, where them includes poor people, snake handlers and those with pierced tongues.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
I don't know when the cult of conspicuous busyness began, but it has swept up almost all the upwardly mobile, professional women I know. Already, it is getting hard to recall the days when, for example, 'Let's have lunch' meant something other than 'I've got more important things to do than talk to you right now.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
Transcendent Oneness does not require self-examination, self-help, or self-work. It requires self-loss.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
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.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
There's more pressure on women to be chirpy and perky.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
The money that fueled the explosion of gluttony at the top had to come from somewhere or, more specifically, from someone. Since no domestic oil deposits had been discovered, no new seams of uranium or gold, and since the war in Iraq enriched only the military contractors and suppliers, it had to come from other Americans.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
The war with Iraq ... had to be one of the greatest non sequiturs in military history. Attacked by a gang composed largely of Islamic militants from Saudi Arabia, the United States countered by invading an unrelated country, and one of the most secular in the Middle East at that.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
There is a vast difference between positive thinking and existential courage.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
Of all the nasty outcomes predicted for women's liberation... none was more alarming, from a feminist point of view, than the suggestion that women would eventually become just like men.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
Lenders, including major credit companies as well as payday lenders, have taken over the traditional role of the street-corner loan shark, charging the poor insanely high rates of interest.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
Well I do think there are people who are habitually negative and depressed and take the opposite approach because they imagine the worst, and their minds become dominated by that. They let their own emotions and expectations transform their perceptions of the world.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
From an entertainment point of view, the Solar System has been a bust. None of the planets turns out to have any real-estate potential, and most of them are probably even useless for filming Dune sequels.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
In fact, there is clear evidence of black intellectual superiority: in 1984, 92 percent of blacks voted to retire Ronald Reagan, compared to only 36 percent of whites.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
Medical debts are the number-one cause of bankruptcy in America.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
Well, the first thing that clued me in to the fact that there was something really scary about breast cancer, way beyond the thought of dying, was coming across an ad in the newspaper for pink breast cancer teddy bears. I am not that afraid of dying, but I am terrified of dying with a pink teddy bear under my arm.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
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
Image
while everything else in our lives has gotten simpler, speedier, more microwavable and user-friendly, child-raising seems to have expanded to fill the time no longer available for it.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Image
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.
Barbara Ehrenreich