Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ellen Goodman
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 11
Journalist
Newton
Massachusetts
Words
Acceptance
Aversion
Language
Judgment
Judgments
Moving
Second
Adoption
Making
Move
Shrinks
Lobotomy
Also
Wonder
Secular
Reluctance
Moral
Hasn
Shrink
Religious
Phrases
Judgmental
Whether
Produced
Disabled

More quotes by Ellen Goodman

Image
Women have gained access to the institutions, but not enough power to overhaul them.
Ellen Goodman
Image
You can teach someone who cares to write columns, but you can’t teach someone who writes columns to care.
Ellen Goodman
Image
What he labels sexual, she labels harassment.
Ellen Goodman
Image
On television, journalists now routinely appear on talk-shows-with-an-attitude where they are encouraged to say what they think about something they may not have finished thinking about.
Ellen Goodman
Image
Taboos are falling across our culture like dominoes. What was unspeakable yesterday dominates talk shows today.
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
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
Image
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.
Ellen Goodman
Image
Ultimately, time is all you have and the idea isn't to save it, but to savour it.
Ellen Goodman
Image
Civility, it is said, means obeying the unenforceable.
Ellen Goodman
Image
Without even knowing it, we are assaulted by a high note of urgency all the time. We end up pacing ourselves to the city rhythm whether or not it's our own. In time we even grow hard of hearing to the rest of the world. Like a violinist stuck next to the timpani, we may lose the ability to hear our own instrument.
Ellen Goodman
Image
Statistically speaking, the Cheerful Early Riser is rejected more completely than a member of any other subculture, save those with boot odor.
Ellen Goodman
Image
My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become the imperative of our middle age. The heaviest burden of guilt we carry into our forties is flab. Our sense of failure is measured by the grade on a stress test.
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
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
The things we hate about ourselves aren't more real than things we like about ourselves.
Ellen Goodman
Image
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.
Ellen Goodman
Image
Maybe at 20 you can write well, but I don't think you could do what I do. Some things have to happen to you first.
Ellen Goodman
Image
Saving time, it seems, has a primacy that's too rarely examined.
Ellen Goodman
Image
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?
Ellen Goodman