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what society requires from art ... is that it function as an early warning system.

Elizabeth Janeway

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Elizabeth Janeway
Age: 91 †
Born: 1913
Born: October 7
Died: 2005
Died: January 15
Author
Feminist
Historian
Literary Critic
Novelist
Brooklyn
New York
Warning
Requires
Function
Early
System
Society
Art

More quotes by Elizabeth Janeway

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We are in a double bind. We are expected to feel inferior not only as women, but because we are old.
Elizabeth Janeway
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Sex cannot be contained within a definition of physical pleasure, it cannot be understood as merely itself for it has stood for too long as a profound connection between human beings.
Elizabeth Janeway
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If every nation gets the government it deserves, every generation writes the history which corresponds with its view of the world.
Elizabeth Janeway
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We put up with a lot to be saved from chaos. We always have.
Elizabeth Janeway
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This is the power of the powerful to define, to structure, to say, 'This is the way the world works.' It's enormous power. Among the powers of the weak, I think the first one is the power not to believe the powerful.
Elizabeth Janeway
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If one is going to change things, one has to make a fuss and catch the eye of the world.
Elizabeth Janeway
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reaction isn't action - that is, it isn't truly creative.
Elizabeth Janeway
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I admire people who are suited to the contemplative life. They can sit inside themselves like honey in a jar and just be.
Elizabeth Janeway
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Creeds and causal systems have argued with each other for millennia, and even so we and our ancestors have managed to live in a world of differing opinions. Philosophical disputes don't often affect the price of fish or wine.
Elizabeth Janeway
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The greatest barrier to women's advance in the public world of action has been their acquiescence in the idea that they don't belong out there.
Elizabeth Janeway
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By setting the passenger seat of my car far back, and opening the glove compartment, I nestle in a very large sheet of thick fiberboard. It's big enough to hold a table easel, my big palette and a water container. Winter is not going to lock me indoors!
Elizabeth Janeway
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Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals which raises the question, how good are these connections?
Elizabeth Janeway
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The surprise of animals... in and out, cats and dogs and a milk goat and chickens and guinea hens, all taken for granted, as if man was intended to live on terms of friendly intercourse with the rest of creation instead of huddling in isolation on the fourteenth floor of an apartment house in a city where animals occurred behind bars in the zoo.
Elizabeth Janeway
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a problem that presents itself as a dilemma carries an unfortunate prescription: to argue instead of act.
Elizabeth Janeway
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Individual advances turn into social change when enough of them occur.
Elizabeth Janeway
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Few cultures have not produced the idea that in some past era the world ran better than it does now.
Elizabeth Janeway
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Powerful people get away with things. That's one way to demonstrate their difference from the rest of us.
Elizabeth Janeway
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Whatever class and race divergences exist, top cats are tom cats.
Elizabeth Janeway
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I am not sure how many sins I would recognize in the world. Some would surely be defused by changed circumstances. But I can imagine none that is more irredeemably sinful than the betrayal, the exploitation, of the young by those who should care for them.
Elizabeth Janeway
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Humor is an antidote to isolation.
Elizabeth Janeway