Quote

Individual advances turn into social change when enough of them occur.

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
Individual
Social
Change
Enough
Advances
Occur
Turn
Turns

More quotes by Elizabeth Janeway

Image
reaction isn't action - that is, it isn't truly creative.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
what society requires from art ... is that it function as an early warning system.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
We don't get offered crises, they arrive.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
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
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
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
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.
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
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
Few cultures have not produced the idea that in some past era the world ran better than it does now.
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
Power is the ability not to have to please.
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
a problem that presents itself as a dilemma carries an unfortunate prescription: to argue instead of act.
Elizabeth Janeway
Image
Whatever class and race divergences exist, top cats are tom cats.
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
Art is a framework, a kind of living trellis, on which public dreaming can shape itself.
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
Powerful people get away with things. That's one way to demonstrate their difference from the rest of us.
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