Home / Quotes / Quote by Ellen Willis

Quote by 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.”

Quote by Ellen Willis

Author

Ellen Willis was an accomplished American cultural critic and essayist, renowned for her insightful perspectives on popular music, film, and gender issues. Her writing career spanned over four decades, influencing countless readers. more

You May Also Like

“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.”

“The will to power is the will to ecstasy is the will to surrender is the will to submit and, in extremis, to die. Or to put it another way, the rage to attain a freedom and happiness one's psyche cannot accept creates enormous anxiety and ends in self-punishing despair.”

Way Ends Self Dies Accepting Despair Anxiety Rage Surrender Enormous Ecstasy Submit Another Way Will Power Freedom And Happiness

Author:Ellen Willis

“To say that historical conditions made personal life possible, and with it the self-consciousness that allowed psychoanalysis to emerge, is to tell half the story: one also has to consider that the erotic impulse, ever pressing for satisfaction, had something to do with making the history that encouraged its expression.”

Made Self Stories Half Consciousness Conditions Expression Historical Satisfaction Impulse Personal Life Erotic Psychoanalysis Self Consciousness Half The Story

Author:Ellen Willis

“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.”

World Feelings Individual Social Can Do Moral Movement Lonely Opposites Witness Solidarity Superiority Bearing Witness

Author:Ellen Willis

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

Individual Social Silence Break Movement Witness Social Movements Demoralizing Bearing Witness

Author:Ellen Willis

“Some conservatives have expressed outrage that the views of professors are at odds with the views of students, as if ideas were entitled to be represented in proportion to their popularity and students were entitled to professors who share their political or social values. One of the more important functions of college that it exposes young people to ideas and arguments they have not encountered at home is redefined as a problem.”

People Ifs Important Ideas Problem Home Young Political Values Social Views Share Students College Argument Function Proportion Professors Odds Popularity Entitled Outrage Social Values

Author:Ellen Willis

“The public's continuing ambivalence about cultural matters is all the more striking given that the political conversation on these issues has for 30 years been dominated by an aggressive, radical right-wing insurgency that has achieved an influence far out of proportion to its numbers. Its potent secret weapon has been the guilt and anxiety about desire that inform the character of Americans regardless of ideology; appealing to those largely unconscious emotions, the right has disarmed, intimidated, paralyzed its opposition.”

“The goal of the right is not to stop abortion but to demonize it, punish it and make it as difficult and traumatic as possible. All this it has accomplished fairly well, even without overturning Roe v. Wade .”

Wells Difficult Goal Abortion Accomplished Wade Roe V Wade

Author:Ellen Willis

“Take back the night? How can women take back the night when they've never had it?”

Author:Ellen Willis

“The tragedy is not that nonviolence did not work against the Nazis, but that it was so seldom utilized... The churches as a whole were too docile or anti-semitic, and too ignorant of the nonviolent message of the Gospel, to act effectively to resist the Nazis or act in solidarity with the Jews.”

Whole Church Messages Tragedy Jew Ignorant Nonviolence Solidarity Nazi Pacifism Docile Anti Semitic

Author:Walter Wink