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I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.

Ellen Goodman

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Ellen Goodman
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 11
Journalist
Newton
Massachusetts
Work
Boxes
Regard
Value
Unless
Novel
Cardboard
Values
Recycled
Social
Redeeming
Without
Recycling

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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.
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In the biotech revolution, it is the human body, not iron or steel or plastic, that's at the source. Are the biocapitalists going to be allowed to dig without consent into our genetic codes, then market them?
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Alternative Lifestyles, the emotional fly-drive packages of our times, come equipped with a set of clothes, a choice of authors, a limited menu of sports and a discount coupon book of clichés.
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You can believe in women's rights without believing that every woman is right.
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The central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears.
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You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever.
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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.
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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 things we hate about ourselves aren't more real than things we like about ourselves.
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We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck. But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.
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In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.
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Taboos are falling across our culture like dominoes. What was unspeakable yesterday dominates talk shows today.
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I think most of us become self-critical as soon as we become self-conscious.
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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.
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You can teach someone who cares to write columns, but you can’t teach someone who writes columns to care.
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We criticize mothers for closeness. We criticize fathers for distance. How many of us have expected less from our fathers and appreciated what they gave us more? How many of us always let them off the hook?
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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.
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Welfare is ... the victim of national compassion fatigue.
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Ultimately, time is all you have and the idea isn't to save it, but to savour it.
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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.
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