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Once upon a time we were just plain people. But that was before we began having relationships with mechanical systems. Get involved with a machine and sooner or later you are reduced to a factor.
Ellen Goodman
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Ellen Goodman
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 11
Journalist
Newton
Massachusetts
People
Machine
Began
Mechanical
Relationships
Reduced
Machines
Factor
Later
Plain
Involved
Sooner
Upon
Systems
Time
Factors
More quotes by Ellen Goodman
Parents remain our touchstones, fellow travelers, even after death. They are both missing and present.
Ellen Goodman
In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.
Ellen Goodman
I rewrite a great deal. I'm always fiddling, always changing something. I'll write a few words - then I'll change them. I add. I subtract. I work and fiddle and keep working and fiddling, and I only stop at the deadline.
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Today Washington is our Hollywood, the Senate our Warner Bros., the White House our Beverly Hills. People who never read a line of a movie magazine deal with the lives of leaders as if they were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
Ellen Goodman
I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.
Ellen Goodman
I wonder whether our adoption of Shrink-ese as a second language, the move from religious phrases of judgment to secular words of acceptance, hasn't also produced a moral lobotomy. In the reluctance, the aversion to being judgmental, are we disabled from making any judgments at all?
Ellen Goodman
There's a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over - and to let go. It means leaving what's over without denying its validity or its past importance in our lives.
Ellen Goodman
Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can't even describe and aren't even aware of.
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If there's a single message passed down from each generation of American parents to their children, it is a two-word line: Better Yourself. And if there's a temple of self-betterment in each town, it is the local school. We have worshipped there for some time.
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The great myth of our work-intense era is 'quality time.' We believe we can make up for the loss of days or hours, especially with each other, by concentrated minutes. But ultimately there is no way to do one-minute mothering. There is no way to pay attention in a hurry.
Ellen Goodman
I vote because it's what small-d democracy is about. Because there are places where people fight for generations and stand for hours to cast a ballot knowing what we ought to remember: that it makes a difference. Not always a big difference. Not always an immediate difference. But a difference.
Ellen Goodman
I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.
Ellen Goodman
we have made an extraordinary transition. From moral absolutes to moral relativism. ... Moral problems become medical ones and yesterday's sinners become today's patients.
Ellen Goodman
My father used to say that if a man fools you once, he's a jerk. If he fools you twice, you're a jerk. Only he didn't use the word jerk.
Ellen Goodman
We each have a litany of holiday rituals and everyday habits that we hold on to, and we often greet radical innovation with the enthusiasm of a baby meeting a new sitter. We defend against it and - not always, but often enough - reject it. Slowly we adjust, but only if we have to.
Ellen Goodman
Saving time, it seems, has a primacy that's too rarely examined.
Ellen Goodman
The truth is that we can overhaul our surroundings, renovate our environment, talk a new game, join a new club, far more easily than we can change the way we respond emotionally. It is easier to change behavior than feelings about that behavior.
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Statistically speaking, the Cheerful Early Riser is rejected more completely than a member of any other subculture, save those with boot odor.
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People have been writing premature obituaries on the women's movement since its beginning.
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When you live alone, you can be sure that the person who squeezed the toothpaste tube in the middle wasn't committing a hostile act.
Ellen Goodman