Quote

Powerful people get away with things. That's one way to demonstrate their difference from the rest of us.

Elizabeth Janeway

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Elizabeth Janeway
Age: 91 †
Born: 1913
Born: October 7
Died: 2005
Died: January 15
Author
Feminist
Historian
Literary Critic
Novelist
Brooklyn
New York
Way
Things
Demonstrate
People
Difference
Rest
Differences
Powerful
Away
Power

More quotes by Elizabeth Janeway

Image
If one is going to change things, one has to make a fuss and catch the eye of the world.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
Whatever class and race divergences exist, top cats are tom cats.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
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
Image
Unless I am what I am and feel what I feel - as hard as I can and as honestly and truly as I can - then I am nothing. Let me feel guilty ... don't try to educate me ... don't protect me.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We are in a double bind. We are expected to feel inferior not only as women, but because we are old.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
Humor is an antidote to isolation.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
Individual advances turn into social change when enough of them occur.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
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
Image
Few cultures have not produced the idea that in some past era the world ran better than it does now.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
The idea of power as a possession, whose asset can be banked and drawn on when needed, comes easy to a society whose rules grow out of the methods of finance capitalism.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
We put up with a lot to be saved from chaos. We always have.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
Mistrust must be acted on, and effective action by the ruled is not solitary and singular, but joint and repeated.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
a problem that presents itself as a dilemma carries an unfortunate prescription: to argue instead of act.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
Power is the ability not to have to please.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
Today, what most people live in, or with, is the less-than-nuclear family. Working fathers are absent from home during most of the day, the children are schooled outside it, and practically all women who work for money must go outside to earn their living.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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