Quotessence
Home / Books / Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

Book by Barbara Ehrenreich · 2 quotes · Positive Thinking, Thinking, Cancer

Filter quotes by topic

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America Quotes

“But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state of mind. The lines at unemployment offices and churches offering free food includes strivers as well as slackers, habitual optimists as well as the chronically depressed. When and if the economy recovers we can never allow ourselves to forget how widespread our vulnerability is, how easy it is to spiral down toward destitution.”

“The question is why one should be so inwardly preoccupied at all. Why not reach out to others in love and solidarity or peer into the natural world for some glimmer of understanding? Why retreat into anxious introspection when, as Emerson might have said, there is a vast world outside to explore? Why spend so much time working on oneself when there is so much real work to be done?”