Barbara Ehrenreich Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  Peace, War, Patriotic

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

  64 Copy quote

• When someone works for less pay than she can live on - when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently - then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Sacrifice, Example, Pay

  "Nickel and Dimed". Book by Barbara Ehrenreich, 2001.

  18 Copy quote

• I grew up hearing over and over, to the point of tedium, that "hard work" was the secret of success: "Work hard and you'll get ahead" or "It's hard work that got us where we are." No one ever said that you could work hard - harder even than you ever thought possible - and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Hard Work, Secret, Finding Yourself

  "Nickel and Dimed". Book by Barbara Ehrenreich, progressive.org. January 1, 2010.

  13 Copy quote

• There is a vast difference between positive thinking and existential courage.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Positive Thinking, Thinking, Differences

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2009). “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”, p.13, Macmillan

  27 Copy quote

• The Republican Party: a few million gun-toting, Armageddon-ready Baptists.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Party, Gun, Atheism

  12 Copy quote

• Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a shortage of money.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Motivation, Character, Poverty

  "Time to Wake Up: Stop Blaming Poverty on the Poor". Essay by Barbara Ehrenreich, published in Maria Shriver "The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink", shriverreport.org. January 13, 2014.

  23 Copy quote

• Sometime in the eighties, Americans had a new set of 'traditional values' installed. ... the poor and the middle class were shaken down, and their loose change funneled blithely upwards to the already overfed.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Class, Down And, Rich

  14 Copy quote

• To be homeless in America is to live like a fugitive. The destitute are our own native-born "illegals."

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  America, Homeless, Born

  "Why Homelessness Is Becoming an Occupy Wall Street Issue" by Barbara Ehrenreich, www.motherjones.com. October 24, 2011.

  14 Copy quote

• The "discovery" of poverty at the beginning of the 1960s was something like the "discovery" of America almost five hundred years earlier. In the case of each of these exotic terrains, plenty of people were on the site before the discoverers ever arrived.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Discovery, Years, America

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1989). “FEAR OF FALLING”, Pantheon

  13 Copy quote

• What you don't necessarily realize when you start selling your time by the hour is that what you're really selling is your life.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Realizing, Hours, Selling

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2010). “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America”, p.187, Metropolitan Books

  5 Copy quote

• The 'working poor,' as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Our Society, Facts, Poor

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2010). “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America”, p.221, Macmillan

  28 Copy quote

• If men were equally at risk from this condition - if they knew their bellies might swell as if they were suffering from end-stage cirrhosis, that they would have to go nearly a year without a stiff drink, a cigarette, or even an aspirin, that they would be subject to fainting spells and unable to fight their way onto commuter trains - then I am sure that pregnancy would be classified as a sexually transmitted disease and abortions would be no more controversial than emergency appendectomies.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Pregnancy, Fighting, Men

  11 Copy quote

• By the Reagan era, the 'culture of poverty' had become a cornerstone of conservative ideology: poverty was caused not by low wages or a lack of jobs but by bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles. The poor were dissolute, promiscuous, prone to addiction and crime, unable to 'defer gratification' or possibly even set an alarm clock. The last thing they could be trusted with was money.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Jobs, Attitude, Addiction

  "Tomgram: Barbara Ehrenreich, American Poverty, 50 Years Later". www.tomdispatch.com. March 15, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• In fact, there is clear evidence of black intellectual superiority: in 1984, 92 percent of blacks voted to retire Ronald Reagan, compared to only 36 percent of whites.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Black, Intellectual, Facts

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

  9 Copy quote

• Marriage is socialism among two people.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Marriage, Eugenics, Two

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

  17 Copy quote

• we are reaching the point, if we have not passed it already, where the largest public housing program in America will be our penitentiary system.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  America, Prison, Program

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2008). “Going to Extremes: Notes from a Divided Nation”, Granta Books (UK)

  13 Copy quote

• Jesus: a wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Jesus, Wine, Atheism

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2010). “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America”, p.68, Macmillan

  11 Copy quote

• Frankly, I adore your catchy slogan, "Adoption, not Abortion," although no one has been able to figure out, even with expert counseling, how to use adoption as a method of birth control, or at what time of the month it is most effective.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Adoption, Abortion, Atheism

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

  64 Copy quote

• no job, no matter how lowly, is truly 'unskilled.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Jobs, Work, Matter

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2010). “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America”, p.193, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• Medical debts are the number-one cause of bankruptcy in America.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Numbers, America, Debt

  7 Copy quote

• Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Clever, Favors, Evolution

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

  10 Copy quote

• The money that fueled the explosion of gluttony at the top had to come from somewhere or, more specifically, from someone. Since no domestic oil deposits had been discovered, no new seams of uranium or gold, and since the war in Iraq enriched only the military contractors and suppliers, it had to come from other Americans.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Military, War, Oil

  "This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation". Book by Barbara Ehrenreich (Introduction), www.huffingtonpost.com. 2008.

  28 Copy quote

• Transcendent Oneness does not require self-examination, self-help, or self-work. It requires self-loss.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Loss, Self, Oneness

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2009). “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”, p.76, Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

• What we need is a tough new kind of feminism with no illusions. Women do not change institutions simply by assimilating into them. We need a feminism that teaches a woman to say no - not just to the date rapist or overly insistent boyfriend but, when necessary, to the military or corporate hierarchy within which she finds herself. 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

  Military, Women, Feminism

  8 Copy quote

• No one should be incarcerated for debt or squeezed for money they have no chance of getting their hands on.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Hands, Debt, Chance

  "Preying on the Poor: How Government and Corporations Use the Poor as Piggy Banks" by Barbara Ehrenreich, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 17, 2012.

  23 Copy quote

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