America is addicted to wars of distraction.

—Barbara Ehrenreich

About Barbara Ehrenreich

Portrait of Barbara Ehrenreich

Barbara Ehrenreich (, AIR-ən-rike; née Alexander; August 26, 1941 – September 1, 2022) was an American author and political activist. During the 1980s and early 1990s, she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. She was a widely read and award-winning columnist and essayist and the author...

More quotations from Barbara Ehrenreich

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.

—Barbara Ehrenreich

Personally I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don't happen to think it's an appropriate subject for an "ethic.

—Barbara Ehrenreich

Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don't get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat cheese . . . get up at dawn to run, break for a midmorning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.

—Barbara Ehrenreich

health class food cheese exercise running

Marriage probably originated as a straightforward food-for-sex deal among foraging primates. Compatibility was not a big issue, nor, of course, was there any tension over who would control the remote.

—Barbara Ehrenreich

history marriage evolution primates

More quotations tagged with “America”

Making weapons is what we know how to do best, the supreme achievement of late-twentieth-century American civilization. To this blessed work we assign our finest intellect and the largest share of our treasure, and in the magnificence of an aircraft carrier or a cruise missile we find our moral and aesthetic equivalent of the Sistine ceiling and Chartres Cathedral.

—Lewis Lapham

weapons morality achievement America civilization missiles

We started from scratch, every American an immigrant who came because he wanted change. Why are we now afraid to change?

—Eleanor Roosevelt

It is supposed to be part of the American tradition that if we want to step out of line, we step out of line. Democracy isn't falling in line behind the president. Democracy is for people to think independently, be skeptical of government, look around and try to find out what's going on. And if they find out that government is deceiving them, to speak out as loudly as they can.

politics power democracy government protest America skepticism

Don Quixote is the true American. . . . You do not have to look in many American eyes to suddenly meet somewhere the beautiful grave lunacy of his gaze.

—Tennessee Williams

What a pity, when Christopher Colombus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it.

—Margot Asquith

history discovery America irony