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Naming things, breaking through taboos and denial is the most dangerous, terrifying, and crucial work. This has to happen in spite of political climates or coercions, in spite of careers being won or lost, in spite of the fear of being criticized, outcast, or disliked. I believe freedom begins with naming things. Humanity is preserved by it.

Eve Ensler

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Eve Ensler
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: May 25
Actor
Artist
Author
Autobiographer
Feminist
Playwright
Writer
New York City
New York
Happens
Careers
Taboo
Climates
Work
Dangerous
Terrifying
Taboos
Believe
Humanity
Breaking
Disliked
Things
Happen
Denial
Naming
Freedom
Crucial
Outcast
Fear
Spite
Criticized
Lost
Begins
Coercion
Political
Climate
Preserved

More quotes by Eve Ensler

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I feel sometimes with boys that the tyranny of patriarchy has had a much more devastating blow on boys than it has on anyone. Because they have literally been forced to disassociate from their hearts.
Eve Ensler
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I believe in irony. And if V-Day has taught me anything, it's that if you go out with artistic, outrageous irony and humor, people are drawn to it.
Eve Ensler
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Success itself doesn't give you happiness. It's what you do with your success that gives you happiness.
Eve Ensler
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Security is elusive. It's impossible. We all die. We all get old. We all get sick. People leave us. People change us. Nothing is secure.
Eve Ensler
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It seems to me there's this tyranny that's not accidental or incidental, to make women feel compelled to look like somebody they're not. I think the effort is being made to get us to turn our time and attention to this instead of important political issues.
Eve Ensler
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The people who are on the front lines every day in hospitals, nurses, the people who are running clinics, the people who are taking care of your children, those are the people who are the lovers of the world, are the good of the world.
Eve Ensler
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I wake up every day and I think, 'I'm breathing! It's a good day.'
Eve Ensler
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To have insurance and have a diagnosis and to have doctors, I just felt it would be immoral on some level to complain.
Eve Ensler
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The clitoris is pure in purpose. It is the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure.
Eve Ensler
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I feel very passionate that we need CAT scanners in every country in the world. There's not a CAT scanner in all of eastern Congo. People don't use the word cancer because they don't get diagnosed. They just die.
Eve Ensler
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Each time I had five hours of the poison going into me, I just pictured everything that needed to be burned away. I pictured wars, I pictured the things my father had done to me, I pictured brutality, and when it was over, I am light.
Eve Ensler
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Why don't we teach sex the way we teach math or history? It is such a deeply crucial and healing part of life and we offer no road map. I think it is core to ending violence.
Eve Ensler
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I think what's been true across the board is the universal patriarchy, the fear of women ever being born back into complete sexuality and life-force. This manifests itself in different cultural variances, but that's really what's going on everywhere.
Eve Ensler
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People are more afraid to love than they are to kill.
Eve Ensler
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I think we have to get bolder. Why after Fukushima didn't we all go out and shut down all the nuclear power plants and stay there until it happened?
Eve Ensler
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Well, the tyranny of masculinity and the tyranny of patriarchy I think has been much more deadly to men than it has to women. It hasn’t killed our hearts. It’s killed men’s hearts. It’s silenced them, it’s cut them off.
Eve Ensler
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We're always learning. We're all in the process of decolonizing ourselves - removing all the parts of us that are sexist, homophobic, transphobic, racist. I mean, everybody in society needs to be in this process because everybody's been brought up in a misogynist, racist, homophobic, transphobic culture.
Eve Ensler
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What I have found is that even when you try to transform existing structures they are so powerful they often overwhelm, seduce, and control you.
Eve Ensler
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Today the United States has the highest prison population in the world, over 2.1 million people. ... We lock people up at a rate that is seven to ten times that of any other democracy.
Eve Ensler
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Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars.
Eve Ensler