Few cultures have not produced the idea that in some past era the world ran better than it does now. Elizabeth Janeway More Quotes by Elizabeth Janeway More Quotes From Elizabeth Janeway We haven't come a long way, we've come a short way. If we hadn't come a short way, no one would be calling us baby. Elizabeth Janeway power baby long I admire people who are suited to the contemplative life. They can sit inside themselves like honey in a jar and just be. It's wonderful to have someone like that around, you always feel you can count on them. You can go away and come back, you can change your mind and your hairdo and your politics, and when you get through doing all these upsetting things, you look around and there they are, just the way they were, just being. Elizabeth Janeway contemplative-life upset people Power is the ability not to have to please. Elizabeth Janeway power memorable inspirational If there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, there is nothing more ubiquitously pervasive than an idea whose time won't go. Elizabeth Janeway powerful ifs ideas We are in a double bind. We are expected to feel inferior not only as women, but because we are old. Elizabeth Janeway aging expected feels If every nation gets the government it deserves, every generation writes the history which corresponds with its view of the world. Elizabeth Janeway government views writing The idea of power as a possession, whose asset can be banked and drawn on when needed, comes easy to a society whose rules grow out of the methods of finance capitalism. Elizabeth Janeway finance power ideas We older women who know we aren't heroines can offer our younger sisters, at the very least, an honest report of what we have learned and how we have grown. Elizabeth Janeway heroines honest advice Mythology is like gravity, inconvenient at times, but necessary for cohesion. Elizabeth Janeway mythology cohesion gravity The common impulse is not to sustain a marriage by finding satisfaction elsewhere, but to end the marriage and set up a new one which will provide the comfort lacking in the first. Elizabeth Janeway marriage satisfaction comfort power is not a thing to be owned. But if you believe that it is such a thing, losing it becomes a possibility to fear. That fear, I think, is one reason for the dark projections of a catastrophic future that are so widespread, in our dual society. The present powerful, being committed to polarization, expect that any new deal will overturn the one that set them in authority; that the last shall be first and the first last, role reversal everywhere, men as slaves, women as masters, in a revolution of contradiction. Elizabeth Janeway powerful change fear Unless I am what I am and feel what I feel - as hard as I can and as honestly and truly as I can - then I am nothing. Let me feel guilty ... don't try to educate me ... don't protect me. Elizabeth Janeway authenticity guilty trying If one is going to change things, one has to make a fuss and catch the eye of the world. Elizabeth Janeway eye change world what society requires from art ... is that it function as an early warning system. Elizabeth Janeway function warning art Whatever class and race divergences exist, top cats are tom cats. Elizabeth Janeway cat race class Sex cannot be contained within a definition of physical pleasure, it cannot be understood as merely itself for it has stood for too long as a profound connection between human beings. Elizabeth Janeway profound long sex Poets are the leaven in the lump of civilization. Elizabeth Janeway lumps poet civilization Though we do not have many poets, we certainly have more than we deserve, for we deserve none at all. It is ourselves that we are hurting by our stupidity and ignorance of poetry. Elizabeth Janeway poetry ignorance hurt Powerful people get away with things. That's one way to demonstrate their difference from the rest of us. Elizabeth Janeway differences powerful people This is the power of the powerful to define, to structure, to say, 'This is the way the world works.' It's enormous power. Among the powers of the weak, I think the first one is the power not to believe the powerful. Elizabeth Janeway powerful believe thinking
