Privilege Quotes - Page 32

• Blindsight is excellent. It's state-of-the-art science fiction: smart, dark and it grabs you by the throat from page one. Like a C J Cherryh book it makes you feel the danger of the hostile environment (or lack of one) out there. And it plays with some fascinating possibilities in human development, and some disconcerting ideas about human consciousness. What else can I say? Thanks for giving me the privilege of reading this.

  Neal Asher

  Art, Book, Reading

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• To act in a way both sexist and racist, to maintain one's class privilege, it is only necessary to act in the customary, ordinary, usual, even polite manner.

  Joanna Russ

  Class, Usual, Ordinary

  Joanna Russ (1983). “How to Suppress Women's Writing”, p.18, University of Texas Press

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• This is what the government is, has always been, the creator and defender of privilege; the organization of oppression and revenge. To hope that it can ever become anything else is the vainest of delusions. They tell you that Anarchy, the dream of social order without government, is a wild fancy. The wildest dream that ever entered the heart of man is the dream that mankind can ever help itself through an appeal to law, or to come to any order that will not result in slavery wherein there is any excuse for government.

  Voltairine de Cleyre

  Dream, Revenge, Heart

  Eleventh of November 1887: Haymarket Memorial Speech by Voltairine de Cleyre, delivered in Chicago, contentdm.library.uvic.ca. 1901.

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• It is my privilege to have introduced House Resolution 1612 honoring the Constitution of the United States, and the freedoms and rights it has given to every American.

  Bob Latta

  Rights, House, United States

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• Almost all the worlds' constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which We the People tell the government what it is allowed to do. We the People are free.

  Ronald Reagan

  Government, People, World

  Farewell Address to the Nation, delivered 11 January 1989, Washington D.C.

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• You can effect a change of robbers every four years. Inestimable privilege - to pull off the glutted leech and attach the lean one! And you can not even choose among the lean leeches, but must accept those designated by the programmers and showmen who have the reptiles on tap!

  Ambrose Bierce

  Years, Leeches, Reptiles

  "The Shadow on The Dial and Other Essays". Book by Ambrose Bierce, www.pub22.net. 1909.

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• ... the media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly.

  Noam Chomsky

  Media, Supportive, Analysis

  Noam Chomsky (1989). “Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies”, p.10, Pluto Press

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• Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate.

  Peggy McIntosh

  Looks, Facts, Permission

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• I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege.

  Peggy McIntosh

  Thinking, White Privilege, Males

  "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" by Peggy McIntosh, nationalseedproject.org. 1989.

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• Charming Alnaschar visions! it is the happy privilege of youth to construct you.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Vision, Youth, Charming

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1848). “Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero”, p.28

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• Popular privileges are consistent with a state of society in which there is great inequality of position. Democratic rights, on the contrary, demand that there should be equality of condition as the fundamental basis of the society they regulate.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Rights, Society, Fundamentals

  Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1886). “Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield: Collected from His Writings and Speeches”

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• What is the special privilege of youth? It is, I think, the power of looking forward, the firm belief that the future holds something that is worth possessing, and that, therefore, one can let the present moment drop from one without regret and without fear.

  Edith Sitwell

  Regret, Thinking, Special

  Edith Sitwell (Dame), Elizabeth Salter, Allanah Harper (1976). “Edith Sitwell: fire of the mind : an anthology”, Michael Joseph

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• I think half the troubles for which men go slouching in prayer to God are caused by their intolerable pride. Many of our cares are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges. We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Prayer, Pride, Men

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.19

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• the vicious result of privilege is that the creature who receives it becomes incapacitated by it as by a disease.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Disease, Results, Vicious

  Pearl S. Buck (1941). “Of Men and Women”

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• What puppets we humans are - what puppets! Born without permission, dying when it is neither pleasant nor convenient, we are made to march or crawl through life on the edge of a precipice from which at any moment we may be knocked over. And we're told we should believe the experience is a privilege!

  Kate Langley Bosher

  Life, Believe, Dying

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• Love, according to our contemporary poets, is a privilege which two beings confer upon one another, whereby they may mutually cause one another much sorrow over absolutely nothing.

  Honore de Balzac

  Love, Two, Sorrow

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• To be prejudiced is the privilege of the thinking human being. ... The open mind is the empty mind.

  Rose Macaulay

  Thinking, Empty Mind, Prejudice

  Rose Macaulay (1922). “Mystery at Geneva: An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings”

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• It might be marvelous to be a man - then I could stop worrying about what's fair to women and just cheerfully assume I was superior, and that they had all been born to iron my shirts. Better still, I could be an Irish man - then I would have all the privileges of being male without giving up the right to be wayward, temperamental and an appealing minority.

  Katharine Whitehorn

  Giving Up, Men, Iron

  Katharine Whitehorn (1981). “View from a Column”

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• The value of life deepens incalculably with the privileges of travel.

  Nathaniel Parker Willis

  Travel, Value Of Life, Values

  Nathaniel Parker Willis (1856). “Summer cruise in the Mediterranean: on board an American frigate”, p.58

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• Things come to the poor that can't get in at the door of the rich. Their money somehow blocks it up. It is a great privilege to be poor--one that no man covets, and brat a very few have sought to retain, but one that yet many have learned to prize.

  George MacDonald

  Block, Men, Doors

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• This is the magnanimity of authorship, when a writer having a topic presented to him, fruitful of beauties for common minds, waives his privilege, and trusts to the judicious few for understanding the reason of his abstinence.

  Charles Lamb

  Understanding, Mind, Topics

  Charles Lamb (1864). “Eliana: Being the Hitherto Uncollected Writings of Charles Lamb”, p.25

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• This glorious union shall not perish! Precious legacy of our fathers, it shall go down honored and cherished to our children. Generations unborn shall enjoy its privileges as we have done; and if we leave them poor in all besides, we will transmit to them the boundless wealth of its blessings!

  Edward Everett

  Children, Father, Blessing

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• Usefulness, whatever form it may take, is the price we should pay for the air we breathe and the food we eat and the privilege of being alive.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Air, Alive, May

  Eleanor Roosevelt (1960). “You Learn by Living”, p.96, Westminster John Knox Press

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• Indiscretion has always seemed to me to be one of the privileges of tact.

  Natalie Clifford Barney

  Tact

  Natalie Clifford Barney (1992). “Adventures of the Mind: The Memoirs of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.19, NYU Press

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• Can man be so age-stricken that no faintest sunshine of his youth may re visit him once a year? It is impossible. The moss on our time-worn mansion brightens into beauty; and the good old pastor, who once dwelt here, renewed his prime and regained his boyhood in the genial breeze of his ninetieth spring. Alas for the worn and heavy soul, if, whether in youth or age, it has outlived its privilege of springtime sprightliness!

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Spring, Sunshine, Men

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1982). “Tales and Sketches”, p.833, Library of America

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