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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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Elizabeth Janeway
Age: 91 †
Born: 1913
Born: October 7
Died: 2005
Died: January 15
Author
Feminist
Historian
Literary Critic
Novelist
Brooklyn
New York
World
Powerful
Power
Define
Firsts
Powers
First
Enormous
Believe
Structure
Way
Weak
Think
Among
Thinking
Works

More quotes by 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.
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If there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, there is nothing more ubiquitously pervasive than an idea whose time won't go.
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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.
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Mistrust must be acted on, and effective action by the ruled is not solitary and singular, but joint and repeated.
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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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Art is a framework, a kind of living trellis, on which public dreaming can shape itself.
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Individual advances turn into social change when enough of them occur.
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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.
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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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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?
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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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Power is the ability not to have to please.
Elizabeth Janeway
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Whatever class and race divergences exist, top cats are tom cats.
Elizabeth Janeway
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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.
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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
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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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Humor is an antidote to isolation.
Elizabeth Janeway
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We put up with a lot to be saved from chaos. We always have.
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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