Ellen Goodman Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• If there's a single message passed down from each generation of American parents to their children, it is a two-word line: Better Yourself. And if there's a temple of self-betterment in each town, it is the local school. We have worshipped there for some time.

  Ellen Goodman

  Education, Children, School

  Ellen Goodman (1983). “At Large”, Fawcett Books

  5 Copy quote

• You can teach someone who cares to write columns, but you can’t teach someone who writes columns to care.

  Ellen Goodman

  Writing, Who Cares, Columns

  4 Copy quote

• Parents remain our touchstones, fellow travelers, even after death. They are both missing and present.

  Ellen Goodman

  Parent, Missing, Traveler

  Ellen Goodman (2010). “Paper Trail: Common Sense in Uncommon Times”, p.333, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• Today Washington is our Hollywood, the Senate our Warner Bros., the White House our Beverly Hills. People who never read a line of a movie magazine deal with the lives of leaders as if they were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

  Ellen Goodman

  White, People, House

  Ellen Goodman (1983). “At Large”, Fawcett Books

  4 Copy quote

• [E]very time you think the entertainment moguls have hit rock bottom, they reach for the jackhammer and rat-a-tat-tat a little deeper.

  Ellen Goodman

  Thinking, Rocks, Entertainment

  4 Copy quote

• I rewrite a great deal. I'm always fiddling, always changing something. I'll write a few words - then I'll change them. I add. I subtract. I work and fiddle and keep working and fiddling, and I only stop at the deadline.

  Ellen Goodman

  Writing, Add, Few Words

  5 Copy quote

• Kerry asks Americans to look at the evidence. Bush asks people to believe.

  Ellen Goodman

  Believe, People, Looks

  4 Copy quote

• Maybe at 20 you can write well, but I don't think you could do what I do. Some things have to happen to you first.

  Ellen Goodman

  Writing, Thinking, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

• The same people who tell us that smoking doesn't cause cancer are now telling us that advertising cigarettes doesn't cause smoking.

  Ellen Goodman

  Cancer, People, Smoking

  7 Copy quote

• Once upon a time we were just plain people. But that was before we began having relationships with mechanical systems. Get involved with a machine and sooner or later you are reduced to a factor.

  Ellen Goodman

  People, Once Upon A Time, Machines

  Ellen Goodman (1990). “Making Sense”, Penguin Group USA

  7 Copy quote

• We may never know why Joe Ellis fabricated a heroic past. But we know that the life he embellished has deeply diminished the life he'd earned.

  Ellen Goodman

  Past, May, Heroic

  4 Copy quote

• I don't know exactly why the notion of homeownership has such a grasp on the American imagination. Perhaps as descendants of landless immigrants we turn our plots into symbols of stability.

  Ellen Goodman

  Home, Imagination, Plot

  Ellen Goodman (1986). “Close to Home”, Fawcett Books

  4 Copy quote

• Even if every program were educational and every advertisement bore the seal of approval of the American Dental Association, we would still have a critical problem. It's not just the programs but the act of watching television hour after hour after hour that's destructive.

  Ellen Goodman

  Educational, After Hours, Television

  Ellen Goodman (1981). “Close to home”, Fawcett

  4 Copy quote

• I am a political recidivist. An incorrigible, repeat voter. A career lever-pusher. My electoral rap sheet is as long as your arm. Over the course of three decades, I have voted for presidents and school board members. I have voted in high hopes and high dudgeon. I have voted in favor of candidates and merely against their opponents. I have voted for propositions written with such complexity that I needed Noam Chomsky to deconstruct their meaning. I have been a single-issue voter and a marginal voter. I have even voted for people who ran unopposed. Hold an election and I'll be there.

  Ellen Goodman

  Rap, School, Careers

  4 Copy quote

• It is not that fathers are better or worse, not that they are more loved or criticized, but rather that they are viewed with far less intensity. There is no Philip Roth or Woody Allen or Nancy Friday who writes about fathers with a runaway excess of humor, horror ... feeling. Most of us let our fathers off the hook.

  Ellen Goodman

  Friday, Father, Writing

  Ellen Goodman (1983). “At Large”, Fawcett Books

  4 Copy quote

• When speech is divorced from speaker and word from meaning, what is left is just ritual, language as ritual.

  Ellen Goodman

  Speech, Language, Ritual

  9 Copy quote

• On television, journalists now routinely appear on talk-shows-with-an-attitude where they are encouraged to say what they think about something they may not have finished thinking about.

  Ellen Goodman

  Attitude, Thinking, Television

  4 Copy quote

• Without even knowing it, we are assaulted by a high note of urgency all the time. We end up pacing ourselves to the city rhythm whether or not it's our own. In time we even grow hard of hearing to the rest of the world. Like a violinist stuck next to the timpani, we may lose the ability to hear our own instrument.

  Ellen Goodman

  Stress, Cities, Knowing

  Ellen Goodman (1990). “Making Sense”, Penguin Group USA

  4 Copy quote

• Alternative Lifestyles, the emotional fly-drive packages of our times, come equipped with a set of clothes, a choice of authors, a limited menu of sports and a discount coupon book of clichés.

  Ellen Goodman

  Sports, Book, Emotional

  Ellen Goodman (1986). “Close to Home”, Fawcett Books

  4 Copy quote

• I suppose we make kids the repository of our highest ideals because children are powerless. In that way we can have ideals and ignore them at the same time.

  Ellen Goodman

  Children, Kids, Way

  Ellen Goodman (1983). “At Large”, Fawcett Books

  4 Copy quote

• Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.

  Ellen Goodman

  Holocaust, Global Warming, Climate Change

  "Ellen Goodman: Global warning". Boston Globe op-ed, www.post-gazette.com. February 09, 2007.

  68 Copy quote

• If women can sleep their way to the top, how come they aren't there?

  Ellen Goodman

  Success, Sleep, Way

  Ellen Goodman (1983). “At Large”, Fawcett Books

  6 Copy quote

• My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become the imperative of our middle age. The heaviest burden of guilt we carry into our forties is flab. Our sense of failure is measured by the grade on a stress test.

  Ellen Goodman

  Fitness, Stress, Guilt

  Ellen Goodman (1990). “Making Sense”, Penguin Group USA

  4 Copy quote

• My father used to say that if a man fools you once, he's a jerk. If he fools you twice, you're a jerk. Only he didn't use the word "jerk."

  Ellen Goodman

  Father, Men, Use

  4 Copy quote

• In today's amphetamine world of news junkies, speed trumps thoughtfulness too often.

  Ellen Goodman

  News, Amphetamines, World

  12 Copy quote

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