75 Quotes by Mary Pipher

Happiness comes from making good choices. Integrity, energy, perseverance, and courage all contribute. In short, happiness is related to character structure, work, health and relationships.

Language imparts identity, meaning, and perspective to our human condition. Writers are either polluters or part of the cleanup.

I do believe our culture is doing a bad job raising boys. The evidence is in the shocking violence of Paducah, Jonesboro, Cheyenne, and Edinboro. It's in our overcrowded prisons and domestic violence shelters. It's in our Ritalin-controlled elementary schools and alcohol-soaked college campuses.

Social change is a million individual acts of kindness; culture change is a million subversive acts of resistance.

Girls struggles with mixed messages: Be beautiful, but beauty is only skin deep. Be sexy, but not sexual. Be honest, but don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. Be independent, but be nice. Be smart, but not so smart you threaten boys.

Young men need to be socialized in such a way that rape is as unthinkable to them as cannibalism.

In all the years I've been a therapist, I've yet to meet one girl who likes her body.

It's important for parents to watch for trouble and convey to their daughters that, if it comes, they are strong enough to deal with it. Parents who send their [adolescent] daughters the message that they'll be overwhelmed by problems aren't likely to hear what's really happening.

Courage has become Raiders of the Lost Ark, or riding in spaceships, killing people, taking enormous physical risks. To me, the kind of courage that's really interesting is someone whose spouse has Alzheimer's and yet manages to wake up every morning and be cheerful with that person and respectful of that person and find things to enjoy even though their day is very, very difficult. That kind of courage is really undervalued in our culture.