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Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich Quotes

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Famous Adrienne Rich Quotes

“Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted”, for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each other’s sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.”

MindHas BeensBodyRealityCultureCenturyMadInstinctMalesSakeDrivenObligationPrimariesExpediencyRefutation
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“Behind all art is an element of desire...Love of life, of existence, love of another human being, love of human beings is in some way behind all art — even the most angry, even the darkest, even the most grief-stricken, and even the most embittered art has that element somewhere behind it. Because how could you be so despairing, so embittered, if you had not had something you loved that you lost?”

IfsWayHumansArtDesireLostHuman BeingsGriefBehindsExistenceElementsArt IsAngryLove LifeDesire Love
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“But can you imagine how some of them were envying you your freedom to work, to think, to travel, to enter a room as yourself, not as some child’s mother or some man’s wife?…we have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself.”

ThinkingMenChildrenMadeSelfMotherChoicesNamesRoomsWifeImagineReadyRelationChosenFamiliarYour Freedom
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“Sexist grammar burns into the brains of little girls and young women a message that the male is the norm, the standard, the central figure beside which we are all deviants, the marginal, the dependent variables. It lays the foundation for androcentric thinking, and leaves men safe in their solipsistic tunnel-vision.”

ThinkingMenLittlesYoungGirlBrainVisionFiguresSafeMessagesStandardsFoundationLaysMalesDependentYoung WomenNormGrammarTunnelsVariablesSexistDeviantsTunnel Vision
Book:On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978
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“Each feminist work has tended to be received as if it emerged from nowhere; as if each one of us had lived, thought, and worked without any historical past or contextual present. This is one of the ways in which women's work and thinking has been made to seem sporadic, errant, orphaned of any tradition of its own.”

IfsThinkingWayHas BeensMadeSeemsPastJusticeDiversityTraditionSocial JusticeHistoricalFeministSporadic
Book:On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978
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“I am a feminist because I feel endangered, psychically and physically, by this society and because I believe that the women's movement is saying that we have come to an edge of history when men - insofar as they are embodiments of the patriarchal idea - have become dangerous to children and other living things, themselves included”

MenFeelsBelieveChildrenIdeasI BelieveDangerousMovementEdgesFeministAssBad AssLiving ThingsEmbodimentThis Society
Book:On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978
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“I believe that words can help us move or keep us paralysed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something - a great deal - to do with how we live our lives and whom we end up speaking with and hearing; and that we can deflect words by trivialization, of course, but also by ritualized respect, or we can let them enter our souls and mix with the juices of our minds.”

LifeMindBelieveSoulEndsHelpingMovingChoicesCoursesBeliefLanguageI BelieveDealsOur LivesRespectHearingToneJuiceOur Choices
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.”

ChildrenSometimesFeelingsSeemsSufferingCausesTinyMonstersBitterSelfishnessMy ChildrenNervesResentmentTendernessIntoleranceGratificationExquisiteAmbivalence
Book:Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution
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“No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness. When we allow ourselves to believe we are, we lose touch with parts of ourselves defined as unacceptable by that consciousness; with the vital toughness and visionary strength of the angry grandmothers, the fierce market women of the Ibo's Women's War, the marriage-resisting women silk workers of pre-Revolutionary China, the millions of widows, midwives, and the women healers tortured and burned as witches for three centuries in Europe.”

BelieveWarThreeLosesInspiringConsciousnessMillionsCenturyEuropeInstitutionsAngryWorkersChinaDefinedRevolutionaryGrandmotherWitchFierceBurnedMasculineRebelliousVisionariesWidowsSilkResistingHealerToughnessInsidersMidwifeRich Women
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.”

EndsUsePoliticsDoorsRevolutionKeysReturnLimitsMalesToleranceWheelsRebelliousLiberatedRelicsRevolvingRevolving DoorsLiberated Woman
Book:On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978
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“As her sons have seen her: the mother in patriarchy: controlling, erotic, castrating, heart-suffering, guilt-ridden, and guilt-provoking; a marble brow, a huge breast, an avid cave; between her legs snakes, swamp-grass, or teeth; on her lap a helpless infant or a martyred son. She exists for one purpose: to bear and nourish the son.”

HeartMotherPurposeSufferingSonHugeBearsGuiltLegsTeethGrassBreastsHelplessProvokingPatriarchySnakesCavesInfantEroticLapMarbleBrowsSwampsAvidMartyred
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“Much male fear of feminism is the fear that, in becoming whole human beings, women will cease to mother men, to provide the breast, the lullaby, the continuous attention associated by the infant with the mother. Much male fear of feminism is infantilism–the longing to remain the mother’s son, to possess a woman who exists purely for him.”

MenHumansWholeMotherHuman BeingsAttentionFeminismSonBecomingLongingMalesCeaseBreastsInfantBeing A WomanLullabyBecoming Whole
Book:On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978
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“We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation.”

FeelsMayLittlesMadeShowsSeemsFacesCan DoBreakGreedSeparationInvisibleCorporateIsolationTechnologicalLimitlessKinshipCorporate Greed
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“The difficulty of saying I-a phrase from the East German novelist Christa Wolf. But once having said it, as we realize the necessity to go further, isn't there a difficulty of saying 'we'? You cannot speak for me. I cannot speak for you. Two thoughts: there is no liberation that only knows how to say 'I'; there is no collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through.”

KnowsWaySaidTwoSpeakRealizingKnow HowMovementDifficultyEastLiberationNovelistsPhrasesCollectives
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“An honorable human relationship- that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love"- is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other. It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity. It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.”

PeopleWayLoveHumansPersonsTwoImportantSelfHardUseProcessJusticeLove IsBreakInvolvedViolentComplexityIsolationDelusionDelicateHonorableBreaking DownHuman RelationsHuman RelationshipsHard WayRefiningSelf DelusionWords Love
Book:On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978
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