Carol Gilligan Quotes

• While an ethic of justice proceeds from the premise of equality—that everyone should be treated the same—an ethic of care rests on the premise of nonviolence—that no one should be hurt.

  Carol Gilligan

  Hurt, Justice, Care

  In a Different Voice ch. 6 (1982)

  52 Copy quote

• In the different voice of women lies the truth of an ethic of care, the tie between relationship and responsibility, and the origins of aggression in the failure of connection.

  Carol Gilligan

  Lying, Responsibility, Ties

  Carol GILLIGAN (2009). “In a Different Voice”, p.131, Harvard University Press

  47 Copy quote

• While men represent powerful activity as assertion and aggression, women in contrast portray acts of nurturance as acts of strength.

  Carol Gilligan

  Powerful, Men, Feminine

  Carol GILLIGAN (2009). “In a Different Voice”, p.128, Harvard University Press

  51 Copy quote

• Maybe love is like rain. Sometimes gentle, sometimes torrential, flooding, eroding, joyful, steady, filling the earth, collecting in underground springs. When it rains, when we love, life grows.

  Carol Gilligan

  Spring, Rain, Love Life

  46 Copy quote

• The hardest times for me were not when people challenged what I said, but when I felt my voice was not heard.

  Carol Gilligan

  Voice, People, Said

  30 Copy quote

• My research suggests that men and women may speak different languages that they assume are the same, using similar words to encode disparate experiences of self and social relationships. Because these languages share an overlapping moral vocabulary, they contain a propensity for systematic mistranslation.

  Carol Gilligan

  Men, Vocabulary, Self

  Carol GILLIGAN (2009). “In a Different Voice”, p.131, Harvard University Press

  38 Copy quote

• Both love and democracy depend on voice -- having a voice and also the resonance that makes it possible to speak and be heard.

  Carol Gilligan

  Voice, Democracy, Speak

  27 Copy quote

• Theory can blind observation.

  Carol Gilligan

  Design, Blind, Theory

  Carol GILLIGAN (2009). “In a Different Voice”, p.34, Harvard University Press

  22 Copy quote

• I've found that if I say what I'm really thinking and feeling, people are more likely to say what they really think and feel. The conversation becomes a real conversation.

  Carol Gilligan

  Real, Thinking, People

  "10 Women of Philosophy, and Why You Should Know Them" by Scotty Hendricks, bigthink.com. September 2, 2017.

  25 Copy quote

• I find the question of whether gender differences are biologically determined or socially constructed to be deeply disturbing.

  Carol Gilligan

  Differences, Determined, Gender

  Carol GILLIGAN (2009). “In a Different Voice”, p.12, Harvard University Press

  30 Copy quote

• At a time when efforts are being made to eradicate discrimination between the sexes in the search for social equality and justice, the differences between the sexes are being rediscovered.

  Carol Gilligan

  Sex, Differences, Justice

  Carol GILLIGAN (2009). “In a Different Voice”, p.22, Harvard University Press

  29 Copy quote

• For a man to be a man, did he have to be a soldier, or at least prepare himself for war? For a woman to be a woman, did she have to be a mother, or at least prepare herself to raise children? Soldiers and mothers were the sacrificial couple, honored by statues in the park, lauded for their willingness to give their lives to others.

  Carol Gilligan

  Mother, Children, Couple

  32 Copy quote

• Trust grows when babies and mothers establish that they can find each other again after the inevitable moments of losing touch. It is not the goodness of the mother or the relationship per se that is the basis for trust; it is the ability of mother and baby together to repair the breaks in their relationship that builds a safe house for love.

  Carol Gilligan

  Mother, Baby, House

  25 Copy quote

• It all goes back, of course, to Adam and Eve - a story which shows among other things, that if you make a woman out of a man, you are bound to get into trouble.

  Carol Gilligan

  Men, Stories, Trouble

  Carol GILLIGAN (2009). “IN A DIFFERENT VOICE”, p.6, Harvard University Press

  16 Copy quote

• The blind willingness to sacrifice people to truth, however, has always been the danger of an ethics abstracted from life.

  Carol Gilligan

  Sacrifice, People, Ethics

  18 Copy quote

• Pleasure is a sensation. It is written into our bodies; it is our experience of delight, of joy. ... Pleasure will become a marker, a compass pointing to emotional true north.

  Carol Gilligan

  Emotional, Joy, Delight

  22 Copy quote

• Women have traditionally deferred to the judgment of men although often while intimating a sensibility of their own which is at variance with that judgment.

  Carol Gilligan

  Men, Judgment, Variance

  Carol GILLIGAN (2009). “In a Different Voice”, p.63, Harvard University Press

  16 Copy quote

• Everything about women is in perpetual crisis.

  Carol Gilligan

  Crisis, Perpetual

  13 Copy quote

• I used to tell women graduate students, half-seriously, that the role of slightly rebellious daughter was one of the better roles for women living in patriarchy.

  Carol Gilligan

  Daughter, Roles, Half

  15 Copy quote

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