If God cares about our puny species, then disasters prove that he is not all-powerful; and if he is all-powerful, then clearly he doesn't give a damn. Barbara Ehrenreich More Quotes by Barbara Ehrenreich More Quotes From Barbara Ehrenreich As anyone knows who has ever had to set up a military encampment or build a village from the ground up, occupations pose staggering logistical problems. Barbara Ehrenreich occupation village military That's the really neat thing about Dan Quayle, as you must have realized from the first moment you looked into those lovely blue eyes: impeachment insurance. Barbara Ehrenreich lovely eye blue As a general rule, when something gets elevated to apple-pie status in the hierarchy of American values, you have to suspect that its actual monetary value is skidding toward zero. Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent. Same thing with work: would we be so reverent about the 'work ethic' if it wasn't for the fact that the average working stiff's hourly pay is shrinking, year by year. Barbara Ehrenreich motherhood zero work I think it's tragic that we have this human capacity, which appears to be hardwired, or so the evolutionary biologists say, for collective joy. We have these techniques for generating it that go back thousands of years, and yet we tend not to use this. Barbara Ehrenreich joy years thinking I realize that after decades of positive thinking the notion of realism, of things as they are, may seem a little quaint. ... When the stakes are high enough and the risks obvious, we still turn to people who can be counted on to understand those risks and prepare for worst-case scenarios. A chief of state does not want to hear a general in the field say that he 'hopes' to win tomorrow's battle or that he's 'visualizing victory'. Barbara Ehrenreich positive-thinking winning reality Yes. I think the anti-Wal-Mart is Costco, which pays much better and has much better health benefits and which is profitable and offers low prices. Barbara Ehrenreich benefits pay thinking Whenever people can access deities directly without the intervention of a religious hierarchy, they don't need to have hierarchy so much. Barbara Ehrenreich religious people needs So even though I consider myself a fairly upbeat person, energetic and things like that, I never do very well on happiness tests. Barbara Ehrenreich upbeat energetic tests It seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of paper pushers the Earth can sustain. Barbara Ehrenreich paper earth numbers We need a kind of feminism that aims not just to assimilate into the institutions that men have created over the centuries, but to infiltrate and subvert them. Barbara Ehrenreich feminism women needs The label of liberalism is hardly a sentence to public ignominy: otherwise Bruce Springsteen would still be rehabilitating used Cadillacs in Asbury Park and Jane Fonda, for all we know, would be just another overweight housewife. Barbara Ehrenreich cadillacs labels would-be Considering the absence of legal coercion, the surprising thing is that men have for so long, and, on the whole, so reliably, adhered to what we might call the breadwinner ethic. Barbara Ehrenreich coercion men long Upscale young men seem to go for the kind of woman who plays with a full deck of credit cards, who won't cry when she's knocked to the ground while trying to board the six o clock Eastern shuttle, and whose schedule doesn't allow for a sexual encounter lasting more than twelve minutes. Barbara Ehrenreich play trying men If that's how it all started, then we might as well face the fact that what's left out there is a great deal of shrapnel and a whole bunch of cinders (one of which is, fortunately, still hot enough and close enough to be good for tanning). Trying to find some sense and order in this mess may be as futile as trying to ... reconstruct the economy of Iowa from a bowl of popcorn. [On searching for evidence of the Big Bang.] Barbara Ehrenreich iowa order science Thus will the fondest dream of Phallic science be realized: a pristine new planet populated entirely by little boy clones of great scientific entrepreneurs free to smash atoms, accelerate particles, or, if they are so moved, build pyramids -- without any social relevance or human responsibility at all. Barbara Ehrenreich responsibility dream science In sci-fi convention, life-forms that hadn't developed space travel were mere prehistory -- horse-shoe crabs of the cosmic scene -- and something of the humiliation of being stuck on a provincial planet in a galactic backwater has stayed with me ever since. Barbara Ehrenreich horse shoes space I'm not a nice person. Barbara Ehrenreich nice-person nice persons There's more pressure on women to be chirpy and perky. Barbara Ehrenreich perky pressure When I was born, my father was a copper miner in Butte, Montana. It was a hard-core, blue-collar situation. Barbara Ehrenreich montana blue father We who officially value freedom of speech above life itself seem to have nothing to talk about but the weather. Barbara Ehrenreich speech freedom weather
