Quotes by Ellen Willis

Ellen Willis

A triumphalist corporate capitalism, free at last of the specter of Communism, has mobilized its economic power to relentlessly marginalize all nonmarket values; to subordinate every aspect of American life to corporate “efficiency” and the bottom line; to demonize not only government but the very idea of public service and public goods.

Government

Ideas

Lines

For a decade Americans have been steeped in the rhetoric of “zero tolerance” and the faith that virtually all problems from drug addiction to lousy teaching can be solved by pouring on the punishment. Even without a Commander in Chief who pledges to rid the world of evildoers, smoke them out of their holes and the like, we would be vulnerable to the temptation to brush aside frustrating complexities and relieve intolerable fear (at least for the moment) by settling on one or more scapegoats to crush. To imagine that trauma casts out fantasy is a dangerous mistake.

Crush

Mistake

Zero

For democrats, it’s as crucial to defend secular culture as to preserve secular law. And in fact the two projects are inseparable: When religion defines morality, the wall between church and state comes to be seen as immoral.

Law

Two

Wall

I believe that we are all, openly or secretly, struggling against one or another kind of nihilism.

Believe

Nihilism

Struggle

If believers feel that their faith is trivialized and their true selves compromised by a society that will not give religious imperatives special weight, their problem is not that secularists are antidemocratic but that democracy is antiabsolutist.

Giving

Religious

Self

Individuals bearing witness cannot do the work of social movements, but they can break a corrosive and demoralizing silence.

Individual

Movement

Silence

Individuals bearing witness do not change history; only movements that understand their social world can do that. Movements encourage solidarity; the moral individual is likely, all unwittingly, to do the opposite, for bearing witness is lonely: it breeds feelings of superiority and moralistic anger against those who are not doing the same.

Feelings

Lonely

Opposites

Mass consumption, advertising, and mass art are a corporate Frankenstein; while they reinforce the system, they also undermine it.

Advertising

Art

Mass Consumption

Mass consumption, advertising, and mass art are a corporate Frankenstein; while they reinforce the system, they also undermine it. By continually pushing the message that we have the right to gratification now , consumerism at its most expansive encouraged a demand for fulfillment that could not so easily be contained by products.

Art

Demand

Messages

Music that boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, loved, hated — as good rock ’n’ roll did — challenged me to do the same, and so, even when the content was antiwoman, antisexual, in a sense antihuman, the form encouraged my struggle for liberation.

Rocks

Singers

Struggle

Follow The Behaviour University in order to get the greatest quotes from the greatest people of all time so that you can tap into your own greatness.

Abortion

Advertising

Anxiety

Art

Attitude

Believe

Character

Class

College

Couple

Crush

Demand

Despair

Emotional

Erotic

Expression

Feelings

Giving

Goal

Government

Home

Human Nature

Ice Cream

Ideas

Illustration

Individual

Jail

Kids

Law

Levels

Lines

Lonely

Loss

Luxury

Mass Consumption

Meaningful

Men

Messages

Mistake

Movement

Moving

Night

Nihilism

Numbers

Opposites

Optimism

Optimistic

Order

Organization

People

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

Tool

The Autobiography

Tool

The Behaviour Diary

Tool

The Dating Diary

Tool

The Relationship Therapist

Tool

Quotes by Ellen Willis

Ellen Willis

For democrats, it’s as crucial to defend secular culture as to preserve secular law. And in fact the two projects are inseparable: When religion defines morality, the wall between church and state comes to be seen as immoral.

I believe that we are all, openly or secretly, struggling against one or another kind of nihilism.

If believers feel that their faith is trivialized and their true selves compromised by a society that will not give religious imperatives special weight, their problem is not that secularists are antidemocratic but that democracy is antiabsolutist.

Individuals bearing witness cannot do the work of social movements, but they can break a corrosive and demoralizing silence.

Mass consumption, advertising, and mass art are a corporate Frankenstein; while they reinforce the system, they also undermine it.

Music that boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, loved, hated — as good rock ’n’ roll did — challenged me to do the same, and so, even when the content was antiwoman, antisexual, in a sense antihuman, the form encouraged my struggle for liberation.

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Topics by Ellen Willis

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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