335 Quotes by Barbara Ehrenreich

Sometimes we need to heed our fears and negative thoughts, and at all times we need to be alert to the world outside ourselves, even when that includes absorbing bad news and entertaining the views of “negative” people.

You can turn away the Mexicans, the African-Americans, the teenagers and other suspect groups, but there’s no fence high enough to keep out the repo man.

Very often in a classroom or a conversation I feel like yelling, ‘What difference does it make?’ Because 94% of my life is occupied with utter trivia. Much of my rebelliousness starts with indifference to what is urgently important to others.

I smoke. It’s expensive. It’s also the best option. You see, I am always, always exhausted. It’s a stimulant. When I am too tired to walk one more step, I can smoke and go for another hour. When I am enraged and beaten down and incapable of accomplishing one more thing, I can smoke and feel a little better, just for a minute. It is the only relaxation I am allowed.

People tend to judge presidents on how the economy performs, and yet we don’t expect them to have the power to do much about it. Or we don’t want them to exercise that power, if they were to have it.

Why shouldn’t our “great chain of being” include the other creatures with which we have shared the planet, the creatures we have martyred in service to us or driven out of their homes to make way for our expansion?

A hint of – dare I say? – animism has entered into the scientific worldview. The physical world is no longer either dead or passively obedient to the “laws.

Imagine spending four billion years stocking the oceans with seafood, filling the ground with fossil fuels, and drilling the bees in honey production – only to produce a race of bed-wetters!

You can and should use logic and reason all you want. But it would be a great mistake to ignore the stray bit of data that doesn’t fit into your preconceived theories, that may even confound everything you thought you were sure of.