Quote

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.

Ellen Goodman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ellen Goodman
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 11
Journalist
Newton
Massachusetts
Change
Behavior
Overhaul
Way
Easier
Surroundings
Environment
Emotionally
Game
Join
Games
Respond
Talk
Club
Feelings
Clubs
Truth
Easily
Renovate

More quotes by Ellen Goodman

Image
[E]very time you think the entertainment moguls have hit rock bottom, they reach for the jackhammer and rat-a-tat-tat a little deeper.
Ellen Goodman
Image
instant opinion is an oxymoron. You don't get real opinions in an instant. You get reactions.
Ellen Goodman
Image
The central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears.
Ellen Goodman
Image
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
Image
In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.
Ellen Goodman
Image
I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.
Ellen Goodman
Image
Welfare is ... the victim of national compassion fatigue.
Ellen Goodman
Image
Forty is ... an age at which people have histories and options. At thirty, they had perhaps less history. At fifty, perhaps fewer options.
Ellen Goodman
Image
Women have gained access to the institutions, but not enough power to overhaul them.
Ellen Goodman
Image
Kerry asks Americans to look at the evidence. Bush asks people to believe.
Ellen Goodman
Image
Maybe this year, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives not looking for flaws, but looking for potential.
Ellen Goodman
Image
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
Image
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.
Ellen Goodman
Image
I think most of us become self-critical as soon as we become self-conscious.
Ellen Goodman
Image
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
Image
People have been writing premature obituaries on the women's movement since its beginning.
Ellen Goodman
Image
This packrat has learned that what the next generation will value most is not what we owned, but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we loved. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth the storage.
Ellen Goodman
Image
She goes in with a prejudice and comes out with a statistic.
Ellen Goodman
Image
Civility, it is said, means obeying the unenforceable.
Ellen Goodman
Image
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