Quote

Welfare is ... the victim of national compassion fatigue.

Ellen Goodman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ellen Goodman
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 11
Journalist
Newton
Massachusetts
Fatigue
Welfare
Victim
National
Compassion

More quotes by Ellen Goodman

Image
Taboos are falling across our culture like dominoes. What was unspeakable yesterday dominates talk shows today.
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
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
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
I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.
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
Parents remain our touchstones, fellow travelers, even after death. They are both missing and present.
Ellen Goodman
Image
It has begun to occur to me that life is a stage I'm going through.
Ellen Goodman
Image
Saving time, it seems, has a primacy that's too rarely examined.
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
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
People have been writing premature obituaries on the women's movement since its beginning.
Ellen Goodman
Image
You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever.
Ellen Goodman
Image
Ultimately, time is all you have and the idea isn't to save it, but to savour it.
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
I think most of us become self-critical as soon as we become self-conscious.
Ellen Goodman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
instant opinion is an oxymoron. You don't get real opinions in an instant. You get reactions.
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