Elizabeth Janeway Quotes - Page 2

I admire people who are suited to the contemplative life. They can sit inside themselves like honey in a jar and just be.

Whatever class and race divergences exist, top cats are tom cats.

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.

The maxims for success laid out by the powerful are never much good as guides for those who aren't powerful.

a problem that presents itself as a dilemma carries an unfortunate prescription: to argue instead of act.

How can you communicate your thoughts or demonstrate your hypotheses by conventional means when all the values and standards that you want to challenge are built into those means? Science and new technology today like to declare that they encourage 'lateral thinking,' new ways of seeing and putting data together - but all systems have an inbuilt resistance to what has not been programmed into them through the premises on which their rules are based.

Love between women is seen as a paradigm of love between equals, and that is perhaps its greatest attraction.

Mistrust must be acted on, and effective action by the ruled is not solitary and singular, but joint and repeated.

I have a problem about being nearly sixty: I keep waking up in the morning and thinking I'm thirty-one.

We put up with a lot to be saved from chaos. We always have.

I am not sure how many "sins" I would recognize in the world. Some would surely be defused by changed circumstances. But I can imagine none that is more irredeemably sinful than the betrayal, the exploitation, of the young by those who should care for them.

it is through the ghost [writer] that the great gift of knowledge which the inarticulate have for the world can be made available.

Humor is an antidote to isolation.

Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals; which raises the question, how good are these connections?

Art is a framework, a kind of living trellis, on which public dreaming can shape itself.

reaction isn't action - that is, it isn't truly creative.

Can one consider controversy without falling into it?

we expect definitions to tell us not only what is, but what to do about it; to show us how the world fits together and how its different parts connect and work. ... A label is the first step toward action.

Today, what most people live in, or with, is the less-than-nuclear family. Working fathers are absent from home during most of the day, the children are schooled outside it, and practically all women who work for money must go outside to earn their living.

If history is really relevant in today's world, the proposition doesn't command much respect. Perhaps the past is a different country, but if so no one much wants to travel there.

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.

We don't get offered crises, they arrive.

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.

Poets are the leaven in the lump of civilization.

As long as mixed grills and combination salads are popular, anthologies will undoubtedly continue in favor.