Quote

What is pretty in nature is confined to the thin skin of the globe upon which we huddle. Scratch that skin, and nature's daemonic ugliness will erupt.

Camille Paglia

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Camille Paglia
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: April 2
Art Historian
Essayist
Film Critic
Journalist
Literary Critic
Professor
Teacher
Writer
Endicott
New York
Camille Anna Paglia
Skins
Scratches
Loss
Globe
Pretty
Ugliness
Upon
Globes
Nature
Confined
Thin
Huddle
Disaster
Erupt
Skin
Scratch

More quotes by Camille Paglia

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Society is an artificial construction, a defense against nature's power.
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Pregnancy demonstrates the deterministic character of woman's sexuality.
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Feminism has exceeded its proper mission of seeking political equality for women and has ended by rejecting contingency, that is, human limitation by nature or fate.
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Pornography is human imagination in tense theatrical action its violations are a protest against the violations of our freedom by nature.
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Obama's folksy come-on is as bad as Madonna's faux British - and both are in need of fresh inspiration.
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Homosexuality is not 'normal' On the contrary it is a challenge to the norm...Nature exists whether academics like it or not. And in nature, procreation is the single relentless rule. That is the norm. Our sexual bodies were designed for reproduction...No one is born gay. The idea is ridiculous...homosexuality is an adaptation, not an inborn trait.
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Repression is an evolutionary adaptation permitting us to function under the burden of our expanded consciousness. For what we are conscious of could drive us mad.
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Capitalism is an art form, an Apollonian fabrication to rival nature. It is hypocritical for feminists and intellectuals to enjoy the pleasures and conveniences of capitalism while sneering at it. Everyone born into capitalism has incurred a debt to it. Give Caesar his due.
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Far from poisoning the mind, pornography shows the deepest truth about sexuality, stripped of romantic veneer.
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Every reading is partial, but that does not absolve us from the quest for meaning, which defines us as a species.
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A serious problem in America is the gap between academe and the mass media, which is our culture. Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy.
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Every man harbors an inner female territory ruled by his mother, from whom he can never entirely break free.
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We need a new kind of feminism, one that stresses personal responsibility and is open to art and sex in all their dark, unconsoling mysteries. The feminist of the fin de si?cle will be bawdy, streetwise, and on-the-spot confrontational, in the prankish Sixties way.
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I cannot be convinced that great artists are moralists. Art is first appearances, then meaning.
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Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions?
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I certainly derived my skills as a prose writer from my scrutiny of poetry and of the individual word. But schools don't do things like that anymore - tracking words down to their roots.
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Imperialism and slavery are no white male monopoly, but are everywhere from Egypt, Assyria, and Persia to India, China and Japan.
Camille Paglia
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In sex, man is driven into the very abyss which he flees. He makes a voyage to non-being and back.
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Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera, theater, music and dance are thriving all over the world, but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s.
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Even a woman of abnormal will cannot escape her hormonal identity.
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