Top quotes by Camille Paglia

A lesser complaint: hair extensions. There are moments on 'All My Children' when half the women actors, young and old, seem to be afflicted by android Barbie creep. All those thick swatches of lifeless strands clustering lankly round ladies' necks! Like orange tanning spray, this is a fashion fad that should be put out of its misery. Votes: 42

Because of my own family's service (in the U.S. Army, Navy, and Massachusetts and New York National Guard), I am a strong supporter of the military and do believe that there are just wars. Votes: 36

Modern bodybuilding is ritual, religion, sport, art, and science, awash in Western chemistry and mathematics. Defying nature, it surpasses it. Votes: 35

Madonna remains the most visible performer on the planet, as well as one of the wealthiest, but would anyone seriously say that artistic self-development is her primary motivating principle? She is too busy with Kabbalah, fashion merchandising, adoption melodramas, the gym, and ill-starred horseback riding to study art. Votes: 31

Our liberal, New York/Washington-based media would never in a million years put Liberal Godfather Ted Kennedy on the spot about his clan's bad behavior, to whose lurid history he himself has contributed so much. Votes: 29

Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera, theater, music and dance are thriving all over the world, but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s. Votes: 27

The 1990s, after the reign of terror of academic vandalism, will be a decade of restoration: restoration of meaning, value, beauty, pleasure, and emotion to art and restoration of art to its audience. Votes: 23

Within the U.S., the Obama presidency will be mainly measured by the success or failure of his economic policies. And here, I fear, the monstrous stimulus package with which this administration stumbled out of the gate will prove to be Obama's Waterloo. Votes: 22

I say the law should be blind to race, gender and sexual orientation, just as it claims to be blind to wealth and power. There should be no specially protected groups of any kind, except for children, the severely disabled and the elderly, whose physical frailty demands society's care. Votes: 21

I have a long view of history - my orientation is archaeological because I'm always thinking in terms of ancient Greece and Rome, ancient Persia and Egypt. Votes: 21

I'm worried about the future of America insofar as our academically most promising students are being funneled through the cookie-cutter Ivy League and other elite schools and emerging with this callow anti-American, anti-military cast to their thinking. Votes: 20

It is capitalist America that produced the modern independent woman. Never in history have women had more freedom of choice in regard to dress, behavior, career, and sexual orientation. Votes: 19

Madonna can still produce a catchy pop song, but she hasn't expanded her artistic vocabulary since the 1990s. Her concerts are glitzy extravaganzas of special effects overkill. She leaves little space in them for emotional depth or unscripted rapport with the audience. Votes: 19

Younger women have no problem in reconciling beauty with ambitions as a professional woman. Votes: 18

Now that virtually every career is an option for ambitious girls, it can no longer be considered regressive or reactionary to reintroduce discussion of marriage and motherhood to primary education. We certainly do not want to return to the simplistic duality of home economics classes for girls and wood shop for boys. Votes: 17

Over the past 20 years, I have noticed that the most flexible, dynamic, inquisitive minds among my students have been industrial design majors. Industrial designers are bracingly free of ideology and cant. The industrial designer is trained to be a clear-eyed observer of the commercial world - which, like it or not, is modern reality. Votes: 15

Video games and YouTube.com are creatively booming, even though Web design, as demonstrated by the ugly clutter of most major news sites, is in the pits. Votes: 15

Out with stereotypes, feminism proclaims. But stereotypes are the west's stunning sexual personae, the vehicles of art's assault against nature. The moment there is imagination, there is myth. Votes: 15

Back in the 1960s, I got a superb education for very little money. The bill for my first year at Harpur College in New York was a few hundred dollars. Votes: 14

I'm a professor of media studies as well as humanities, and I'm an evangelist of popular culture, but when there's only media, then there's going to be a slow debasement of language, and that's what I think we're fighting. Votes: 14

Bravo's 'Real Housewives' series isn't just entertainment for devoted fans like me - it's an entire all-absorbing universe of pride and passion. Votes: 14

Madonna is her own Hollywood studio - a popelike mogul and divine superstar in one. She has a laserlike instinct for publicity, aided by her visual genius for still photography (which none of her legion of imitators has). Unfortunately, her public life has dissolved into a series of staged photo ops. Votes: 13

I was the first to advocate the Web. But I am very troubled by this thing that every kid must have a laptop computer. The kids are totally in the computer age. There's a whole new brain operation that's being moulded by the computer. Votes: 12

I want to promote the introduction of art history in primary schools and to convince the general public that, even in a period of economic crisis, arts funding is an absolute necessity at the federal, state, and local levels. Votes: 11

Except for naval and air exercises, our military should be stationed on American soil, where service men and women can lead normal lives in close proximity to family and friends. Votes: 10

Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist. Votes: 8

One of the main reasons I am so drawn to Hitchcock is that he planned his shots way in advance on story-boards, which he designed like classic paintings (he was an art connoisseur). It's why he found shooting on set boring - because he had already composed the film in his head. Votes: 8

I love the Web, but the basis of my work is going through the physical books. When you go to the library, you see other books around on the shelves that you never knew existed. You can flip through a book and see the whole outline of it. Votes: 5

It's aggravating that Hollywood has never gotten credit for the role it played in promoting modern design. Votes: 4

I regard affirmative action as pernicious - a system that had wonderful ideals when it started but was almost immediately abused for the benefit of white middle-class women. Votes: 4

Television is actually closer to reality than anything in books. The madness of TV is the madness of human life. Votes: 0

If colleges and universities are really concerned about women's rights, then they must adjust to a far more flexible structure to allow young women students to take leaves of absence if they want to have children early. Votes: 0

It's time for a recovery and reassessment of North American thinkers. Marshall McLuhan, Leslie Fiedler and Norman O. Brown are the linked triad I would substitute for Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, whose work belongs to ravaged postwar Europe and whose ideas transfer poorly into the Anglo-American tradition. Votes: 0

Perhaps there is no greater issue facing contemporary women than the choices they must make about balancing home and work. Votes: 0

In an era ruled by materialism and unstable geopolitics, art must be restored to the center of public education. Votes: 0

Beauty is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects, giving them limit, symmetry, proportion. Beauty halts and freezes the melting flux of nature. Votes: 0

I believe that government should confine itself to the public realm and that it should be as stripped down as possible, within reason. It should not be burdened by excess bureaucracy. Votes: 0

It is not true that I oppose government funding of the arts. Votes: 0

I've always felt that the obligation of teachers is to have a huge, broad overview and to provide a foundation course to the students. The long view of history is absolutely crucial. Votes: 0

I respect the astute and rigorously unsentimental David Horowitz as one of America's most original and courageous political analysts. He has the true 1960s spirit - audacious and irreverent, yet passionately engaged and committed to social change. Votes: 0

Uncritical American boosterism - automatic endorsement of every government action - is myopic and self-defeating. Votes: 0

Feminism is dead. The movement is absolutely dead. The women's movement tried to suppress dissident voices for way too long. There's no room for dissent. Votes: 0

You have to accept the fact that part of the sizzle of sex comes from the danger of sex. You can be overpowered. Votes: 0

If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts. Votes: 0

Throughout history, ambassadors have always been symbolic incarnations of the sovereignty of their nations and the dignity of their leaders. Votes: 0

Because most of my career in the classroom has been at art schools (beginning at Bennington in the 1970s), I am hyper-aware of the often grotesque disconnect between commentary on the arts and the actual practice or production of the arts. Votes: 0

The plastic surgery issue is really looming because girls in the U.S. are getting it in their teens. Votes: 0

When I was a child, my father taught me to put up my fists like a boy and to be prepared to defend myself at all times. Votes: 0

I believe that every person, male and female, needs to be in a protective mode at all times of alertness to potential danger. The world is full of potential attacks, potential disasters. Votes: 0

Popular culture - above all rock 'n' roll, with its African-American R & B roots - did far more to radicalize us than did any feminist leader. Votes: 0

No genuinely avant-garde artist should ever be on the government dole. Votes: 0

A woman simply is, but a man must become. Votes: 0

Students are very gullible about the web. The only way you can really sort out information on the web is if you've had a prior training in book culture. Votes: 0

Christianity began as a religion of the poor and dispossessed - farmers, fishermen, Bedouin shepherds. There's a great lure to that kind of simplicity and rigor - the discipline, the call to action. Votes: 0

Young people today are flooded with disconnected images but lack a sympathetic instrument to analyze them as well as a historical frame of reference in which to situate them. I am reminded of an unnerving scene in Stanley Kubrick's epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, where an astronaut, his air hose cut by the master computer gone amok, spins helplessly off into space. Votes: 0

In the theory of gender I began from zero. There is no masculine power or privilege I did not covet. But slowly, step by step, decade by decade, I was forced to acknowledge that even a woman of abnormal will cannot escape her hormonal identity. Votes: 0

Teenage boys, goaded by their surging hormones run in packs like the primal horde. They have only a brief season of exhilarating liberty between control by their mothers and control by their wives. Votes: 0

The true mission of feminism today is not to carp about the woes of affluent Western career women but to turn the spotlight on life-and-death issues affecting women in the Third World, particularly in rural areas where they have little protection against exploitation and injustice. Votes: 0

Our presence in Afghanistan is not worth the price of any more American lives or treasure. Votes: 0

Gloria Steinem's marriage is proof positive of the emotional desperation of ageing feminists who for over 30 years worshiped the steely career woman and callously trashed stay-at-home moms. Votes: 0

The airheads of Congress will keep their own plush healthcare plan - it's the rest of us guinea pigs who will be thrown to the wolves. Votes: 0

Gay men are guardians of the masculine impulse. To have anonymous sex in a dark alleyway is to pay homage to the dream of male freedom. The unknown stranger is a wandering pagan god. The altar, as in pre-history, is anywhere you kneel. Votes: 0

Feminism has become a catch-all vegetable drawer where bunches of clingy sob sisters can store their moldy neuroses. Votes: 0

What troubles me about the "hostile workplace" category of sexual harassment policy is that women are being returned to their old status of delicate flowers who must be protected from assault by male lechers. It is anti-feminist to ask for special treatment for women. Votes: 0

My anti-liberal position should not be mistaken for conservatism ... Votes: 0

Anti-religious sneers are a hallmark of perpetual adolescents. Votes: 0

The only antidote to the magic of images is the magic of words. Votes: 0

When anything goes, it's women who lose. Votes: 0

Women are not in control of their bodies; nature is. Ancient mythology, with its sinister archetypes of vampire and Gorgon, is more accurate than feminism about the power and terror of female sexuality. Votes: 0

The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism. Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images. Votes: 0

Nefertiti is like Athena born from the brow of Zeus , a head-heavy armored goddess. She is beautiful but desexed. Votes: 0

At the opening of the Odyssey, Telemachus, inspired by the male-born Athena, searches for his father by turning against his mother. Jesus too publicly spurns his mother to be about his father's business. Male adulthood begins with the breaking of female chains.? Votes: 0

My generation of bossy, confident, baby-boom women were something brand new in history. Our energy and assertiveness weren't created by Betty Friedan, unknown before her 1963 book, or by Gloria Steinem, whose political activism, as even the Lifetime profile admitted, did not begin until 1969. Votes: 0

Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye. We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom. Votes: 0

Our major universities are now stuck with an army of pedestrian, toadying careerists, Fifties types who wave around Sixties banners to conceal their record of ruthless, beaver-like tunneling to the top. Votes: 0

Hollywood movies of the Fifties, like The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, with their epic clash of pagan and Judeo-Christian cultures, tell more about art and society than the French-infatuated ideologues who have made a travesty of the best American higher criticism. Votes: 0

Sex at the age of 90 is like playing billiards with a rope Votes: 0

Bisexuality is our best hope of escape from the animosities and false polarities of the current sex wars. Votes: 0

Not since the Black Panthers sailed into their Upper East Side tea party has there been so daffy an exercise in radical chic. Votes: 0

My advice to the reader approaching a poem is to make the mind still and blank. Let the poem speak. This charged quiet mimics the blank space ringing the printed poem, the nothing out of which something takes shape. Votes: 0

What is Mona Lisa thinking? Nothing, of course. Her blankness is her menace and our fear. [...] Walter Pater is to call her a 'vampire,' coasting through history on her secret tasks. Votes: 0

If men are obsolete, then women will soon be extinct -- unless we rush down that ominous Brave New World path where women clone themselves by parthenogenesis, as famously do Komodo dragons, hammerhead sharks, and pit vipers. Votes: 0

Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest. They are both amoral and immoral, consciously breaking rules. Their ''evil'' look at such times is no human projection: the cat may be the only animal who savors the perverse or reflects upon it Votes: 0

Butchery is not the point of vampirism. Sex - domination and submission - is. Votes: 0

In the Seventies, women runners, developing amenorrhea and calcium-related shin splints, were the first to realize that nature is hovering over us, ready to shut down our systems if our fetus-feeding fat reserve drops below a certain percentage of body weight. In other words, in nature's eyes we are nothing but milk sacs and fat deposits. Votes: 0

Women's studies needed a syllabus and so invented a canon overnight. It puffed up clunky, mundane contemporary women authors into Oz-like, skywriting dirigibles. Our best women students are being force-fed an appalling diet of cant, drivel and malarkey. Votes: 0

It is capitalist America that produced the modern independent woman. Votes: 0

Society is a system of inherited forms reducing our humiliating passivity to nature. We may alter these forms, slowly or suddenly, but no change in society will change nature. Votes: 0

Woman's sexuality is disruptive of the dully mechanical workaday world, in which efficiency means uniformity. The problems of woman's entrance into the career system spring from more than male chauvinism. She brings nature into the social realm, which may be too small to contain it. Votes: 0

Imperialism and slavery are no white male monopoly, but are everywhere from Egypt, Assyria, and Persia to India, China and Japan. Votes: 0

Elegance is reduction, simplification, condensation. It is spare, stark, sleek. Elegance is cultivated abstraction. The source of Greek and Roman classicism - clarity, order, proportion, balance - is in Egypt. Votes: 0

Great women scholars like Jane Harrison and Gisela Richter were produced by the intellectual discipline of the masculine classical tradition, not the wishy-washy sentimentalism of clingy, all-forgiving sisterhood, from which no first-rate book has yet emerged. Every year, feminists provide more and more evidence for the old charge that women can neither think nor write. Votes: 0

Love for all means coldness to something or someone. Even Jesus, let us recall, was unnecessarily rude to his mother at Cana. Votes: 0

Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions? Votes: 0

The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification. Votes: 0

American universities are organized on the principle of the nuclear rather than the extended family. Graduate students are grimly trained to be technicians rather than connoisseurs. The old German style of universal scholarship has gone. Votes: 0

The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture Votes: 0

Old school feminism, coveting social power, is blind to woman's cosmic sexual power. Votes: 0

Men know they are sexual exiles. They wander the earth seeking satisfaction, craving and despising, never content. There is nothing in that anguished motion for women to envy. Votes: 0

The moment there is imagination there is myth Votes: 0

Cinema is the culmination of the obsessive, mechanistic male drive in western culture. The movie projector is an Apollonian straight-shooter, demonstrating the link between aggression and art. Every pictorial framing is a ritual limitation, a barred precinct. Votes: 0

The damage done to U.S. prestige by the feckless, buffoonish George W. Bush will take years to repair. Votes: 0

History shows that male homosexuality, which like prostitution flourishes with urbanization and soon becomes predictably ritualized, always tends toward decadence. Votes: 0

In negotiating with rejected lovers or husbands, women must stop thinking they can make everyone happy. In many cases of harassment and stalking, it is clear that the woman never learned how to terminate the fantasy which requires resolution and decisiveness on their part. Wavering, dithering, or passive hysterical fear will only intensify or prolong pursuit. Votes: 0

Homeric mind is ingenuity, practical intelligence. There is no Rodin-like deep thinking, no mathematical or philosophical speculation. Odysseus thinks with his hands. Votes: 0

The smouldering eroticism of great European actresses like Jeanne Moreau demonstrated to my generations women's archetypal mystery and glamour, completely missing from the totalitarian world-view of the misogynist Foucault. For me, the big French D is not Derrida, but Deneuve. Votes: 0

The followers of Derrida are pathetic, snuffling in French pockets for bits of pieces of a deconstructive method already massively and coherently presented and with a mature sense of the sacred in Buddhism and Hinduism. Votes: 0

Lacan , Derrida and Foucault are the perfect prophets for the weak, anxious academic personality, trapped in verbal formulas and perennially defeated by circumstances. They offer a self-exculpating cosmic explanation for the normal professorial state of resentment, alienation, dithering passivity and inaction. Votes: 0

In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysus is the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus is a vandal. Votes: 0

Mental illness is no myth, as some have claimed. It is a disturbance in our sense of possession of a stable inner self that survives its personae. Votes: 0

Education has become a prisoner of contemporaneity. It is the past, not the dizzy present, that is the best door to the future. Votes: 0

The trauma of the Sixties persuaded me that my generation's egalitarianism was a sentimental error. I now see the hierarchical as both beautiful and necessary. Efficiency liberates; egalitarianism tangles, delays, blocks, deadens. Votes: 0

The moment is ripe for an experienced businessman to talk practical, prudent economics to the electorate - which is why Mitt Romney's political fortunes are steadily being resurrected from the grave. Votes: 0

There's something retro about your persona. It's like the pre-World War II generation of reporters - those unpretentious, working-class guys who hung around saloons and used rough language. Now they've all been replaced with these effete Ivy League elitists who swarm over the current media. Nerds - utterly dull and insipid. Votes: 0

Masculinity is risky and elusive. It is achieved by a revolt from woman, and it is confirmed only by other men. Manhood coerced into sensitivity is no manhood at all. Votes: 0

Male aggression and lust are the energizing factors in culture. They are men's tools of survival in the pagan vastness of female nature. Votes: 0

Computer enhancement has spread to still photography in advertisements, fashion pictorials, and magazine covers, where the human figure and face are subtly elongated or remodeled at will. Caricature is our ruling mode. Votes: 0

America is still a frontier country of wide open spaces. Our closeness to nature is one reason why our problem is not repression but regression; our notorious violence is the constant eruption of primi-tiveness, of anarchic individualism. Votes: 0

For me, the Profumo affair symbolizes the evanescence of male government compared to women's cosmic power. Votes: 0

There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper. Votes: 0

Men who shrink from penetration of the female body are paralyzed by justifiable apprehension, since they are returning to our uncanny site of origin. Votes: 0

The last western society to worship female powers was Minoan Crete. And significantly, that fell and did not rise again. Votes: 0

I view the prostitute as one of the few women who is totally in control of her fate, totally in control of the realm of sex. The lesbian feminists tried to take control of female sexuality away from men - but the prostitute was doing that all along. Votes: 0

[T]he most viciously intolerant campus I ever visited as a lecturer was Brown, where the humanities program has been gutted by a jejune brand of feminist theory and cultural and media studies. Votes: 0

Feminism has tried to dismiss the femme fatale as a misogynist libel, a hoary cliche. But the femme fatale expresses woman's ancient and eternal control of the sexual realm. The specter of the femme fatale stalks all of men's relationships with women. Votes: 0

The mystique of the femme fatale cannot be perfectly translated into male terms. Votes: 0

I admire hard-bitten, wisecracking realism of Ida Lupino and the film noir heroines. I'm sick of simpering white girls with their princess fantasies. Votes: 0

High Romanticism shows you nature in all its harsh and lovely metamorphoses. Flood, fire and quake fling us back to the primal struggle for survival and reveal our gross dependency on mammoth, still mysterious forces. Votes: 0

Everyone of my generation who preached free love is responsible for AIDS. Votes: 0

The reform of a college English department cuts no ice down at the corner garage. Votes: 0

If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis. Votes: 0

I hate dogma in any form. I hated it in the Catholic Church and Girl Scout troops of the 1950s, and I hate in in gay activism and established feminism today. Votes: 0

The moral ambivalence of the great mother goddesses has been conveniently forgotten by those American feminists who have resurrected them. We cannot grasp nature's bare blade without shedding our own blood. Votes: 0

Women's studies is a comfy, chummy morass of unchallenged groupthink . It is, with rare exception, totally unscholarly. Academic feminists have silenced men and dissenting women. Votes: 0

Many, perhaps most, very learned people prefer the company of their books to sitting in a crowd listening to history and art being mangled; furthermore, it is unlikely that the venerable scholars will stand up afterward to declare, "This lecture was a load of crap." The more profound a professor's distaste with the proceedings, the more likely he is to melt away at the end of the talk. Votes: 0

All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once! Votes: 0

My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm-as in abortion, sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a representative democracy. Votes: 0

Serial or sex murder, like fetishism, is a perversion of male intelligence. It is a criminal abstraction, masculine in its deranged egotism and orderliness. It is the asocial equivalent of philosophy, mathematics, and music. There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper. Votes: 0

Lacan is a tyrant who must be driven from our shores. Narrowly trained English professors who know nothing of art history or popular culture think they can just wade in with Lacan and trash everything in sight. Votes: 0

Sotomayor's vainglorious lecture bromide about herself as 'a wise Latina' trumping white men is a vulgar embarrassment - a vestige of the bad old days of male-bashing feminism. Votes: 0

Social justice and compassion are compatible with an intelligent respect for private enterprise and law and order. Votes: 0

Promiscuity in men may cheapen love but sharpen thought. Promiscuity in women is illness, a leakage of identity. Votes: 0

A serious problem in America is the gap between academe and the mass media, which is our culture. Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy. Votes: 0

I'm for a high libido president! I applaud him if he gets up and picks up women. Votes: 0

If you live in rock and roll, as I do, you see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being aroused by male lust. It attracts women. It doesn't repel them. Votes: 0

Sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges. Votes: 0

The thrill of terror is passive, masochistic, and implicitly feminine. It is imaginative submission to overwhelming superior force. Votes: 0

Science is a method of logical analysis of nature's operations. It has lessened human anxiety about the cosmos by demonstrating the materiality of nature's forces, and their frequent predictability. Votes: 0

Not a shred of evidence supports the existence of matriarchy anywhere in the world at any time. [...] The matriarchy hypothesis, revived by American feminism, continues to flourish outside the university Votes: 0

Much violence against women originates in emotional territory that they already command. By midlife and early old age, as the hormones of both genders change, women are in total, despotic control of their marriages. Votes: 0

Minerva save us from the cloying syrup of coercive compassion! Votes: 0

Running to Mommy and Daddy on the campus grievance committee is unworthy of strong women. Votes: 0

Daytime soap operas, which I used to adore, have been declining in quality and importance for over a decade, and I gradually stopped monitoring them. Votes: 0

Prostitution is not just a service industry, mopping up the overflow of male demand, which always exceeds female supply. Prostitution testifies to the amoral power struggle of sex, which religion has never been able to stop. Prostitutes, pornographers, and their patrons are marauders in the forest of archaic night. Votes: 0

Tranvestism is far more common among men, I noted, because it originates in the primary relation of mother and son. Votes: 0

Not until all babies are born from glass jars will the combat cease between mother and son. Votes: 0

The only thing that will be remembered about my enemies after they're dead is the nasty things I've said about them. Votes: 0

There is such a thing as seduction, and it needs encouragement rather than discouragement in our puritanical Anglo-American world. Votes: 0

The North American intellectual tradition began, I maintain, in the encounter of British Romanticism with assertive, pragmatic North American English - the Protestant plain style in both the U.S. and Canada, with its no-nonsense Scottish immigrants. Votes: 0

When in doubt, I read Oscar Wilde. Votes: 0

Male conspiracy cannot explain all female failures. I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant. Genius is not checked by social obstacles: it will overcome. Votes: 0

It's patriarchal society that has freed me as a woman. Votes: 0

Patriarchy, routinely blamed for everything, produced the birth control pill, which did more to free contemporary women than feminism itself. Votes: 0

We do not need French post-structuralism, whose pedantic jargon, clumsy convolutions, and prissy abstractions have spread throughout academe and the arts and are now blighting the most promising minds of the next generation. This is a major crisis if there ever was one, and every sensible person must help bring it to an end. Votes: 0

Teaching is a performance art. Votes: 0

We need a new kind of feminism, one that stresses personal responsibility and is open to art and sex in all their dark, unconsoling mysteries. The feminist of the fin de si?cle will be bawdy, streetwise, and on-the-spot confrontational, in the prankish Sixties way. Votes: 0

Jesus was a brilliant Jewish stand-up comedian, a phenomenal improviser. His parables are great one-liners. Votes: 0

Women are in league with each other, a secret conspiracy of hearts and pheromones Votes: 0

My political philosophy as a libertarian says that government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior. My professional ethic as a thinker and writer, however, says that self-knowledge is our ultimate responsibility Votes: 0

Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope. Votes: 0

Pornography is human imagination in tense theatrical action; its violations are a protest against the violations of our freedom by nature. Votes: 0

There is no gay leader anywhere near the stature of Martin Luther King, because black activism drew on the profound spiritual tradition of the church, to which gay political rhetoric is childishly hostile. Votes: 0

Human life began in flight and fear. Religion rose from rituals of propitiation, spells to lull the punishing elements. Votes: 0

Butterfield 8, with its call-girl heroine working her way down the alphabet of men from Amherst to Yale, appeared at a very formative moment in my adolescence and impressed me forever with the persona of the prostitute, whom I continue to revere. The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture. Votes: 0

Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters. Votes: 0

What I see is not a world of male oppression and female victimization, but an internation conspiracy by women to keep from men the knowledge of men's own frailty. A strange maternal protectiveness is at work. Votes: 0

Man is not merely the sum of his masks. Behind the shifting face of personality is a hard nugget of self, a genetic gift.... The self is malleable but elastic, snapping back to its original shape like a rubber band. Mental illness is no myth, as some have claimed. It is a disturbance in our sense of possession of a stable inner self that survives its personae. Votes: 0

What has been forgotten is that there were major intellectual breakthroughs in the 1960s, thanks to North American writers of an older generation. There was a rupture in continuity, since most young people influenced by those breakthroughs did not enter the professions. Votes: 0

Heaven help the American-born boy with a talent for ballet Votes: 0

Reunion with the mother is a siren call haunting our imagination. Once there was bliss, and now there is struggle. Dim memories of life before the traumatic separation of birth may be the source of Arcadian fantasies of a lost golden age. Votes: 0

I certainly derived my skills as a prose writer from my scrutiny of poetry and of the individual word. But schools don't do things like that anymore - tracking words down to their roots. Votes: 0

Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not, he just falls back into her and is swallowed up. Votes: 0

I don't go to New York. I don't go to parties. I just do my business and study nature. My career is 28 years in an obscure art school, with limited staff and no perks. All I am is a teacher. Votes: 0

The male orientation of classical Athens was inseparable from its genius. Athens became great not despite but because of its misogyny. Votes: 0

Pursuit and seduction are the essence of sexuality. It's part of the sizzle. Votes: 0

Nothing is more hackneyed than the liberal dogma that shock value confers automatic importance on an artwork. Votes: 0

Whiffle [whine and wheeze and snuff and sniffle]: The annoying scratchy sound made by weepy feminists as they lament the sufferings of women and, houndlike, sniff out evidence of male oppression. Votes: 0

This was a good example of the fascist policing of public discourse in this country by nominal liberals who have become as unthinkingly wedded to dogma as any junior member of the Spanish Inquisition. Votes: 0

Even the best critical writing on Emily Dickinson underestimates her. She is frightening. To come to her directly from Dante, Spenser, Blake, and Baudelaire is to find her sadomasochism obvious and flagrant. Birds, bees, and amputated hands are the dizzy stuff of this poetry. Dickinson is like the homosexual cultist draping himself in black leather and chains to bring the idea of masculinity into aggressive visibility. Votes: 0

Sappho is a great poet because she is a lesbian, which gives her erotic access to the Muse. Sappho and the homosexual-tending Emily Dickinson stand alone above women poets, because poetry's mystical energies are ruled by a hierach requiring the sexual subordination of her petitioners. Women have achieved more as novelists than as poets because the social novel operates outside the ancient marriage of myth and eroticism. Votes: 0

Academic Marxism is a fantasy world, and unctuous compassion-sweepstakes, into which real workers or peasants never penetrate. Votes: 0

The Bible has come under fire for making woman the fall guy in man's cosmic drama. But in casting a male conspirator, the serpent, as God's enemy, Genesis hedges and does not take its misogyny far enough. The Bible defensively swerves from God's true opponent, chthonian nature. The serpent is not outside Eve but in her. She is the garden and the serpent. Votes: 0

I am a very reclusive, private person. Votes: 0

All men even, I have written, Jesus Christ began as flecks of tissue inside a woman's womb. Every boy must stagger out of the shadow of a mother goddess, whom he never fully escapes. Votes: 0

Lately, I've been doing a lot of tuning in and impatiently tuning out. As a longtime fan of talk radio, I don't think this bodes well for the long-term broad appeal of the medium. Votes: 0

I believe that the shocking toll of AIDS on gay men in the West was partly due to their Seventies delusions that a world without women was possible. All-male energies, unbalanced and ravenous, literally tore the body apart. Votes: 0

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers. Votes: 0

I want a revamped feminism. Putting the vamp back means the lady must be a tramp. My generation of the Sixties rebels wanted to smash the bourgeois codes that had become authoritarian totems of the Fifties.... Thirty years later, we're still stuck with the ["nice" girl]. Votes: 0

If feminism has receded in visibility and prestige, it is precisely because its vision of life's goals and rewards has become too narrow and elitist. Votes: 0

The stigma of the prostitute is the badge of her identity. That is why the client goes to her. If he wanted someone without a stigma, he'd go and screw the lady next door. Votes: 0

The venerable emeritus professors still at Yale when I entered graduate school [in the 1960s] may have been reserved, puritanical WASPs, but they were men of honor who had given their lives to scholarship. Today in the elite schools, honor and ethics are gone. Votes: 0

I believe that everybody has the right to view his or her own body as a palette. However, I think intellectuals should at least try to be role models. Votes: 0

Feminism has exceeded its proper mission of seeking political equality for women and has ended by rejecting contingency, that is, human limitation by nature or fate. Votes: 0

Working moms commonly testify that they feel guilty when they are away from their children and guilty when they are not at their jobs. Devoted fathers certainly miss their children deeply, but it does not seem to be with the same gnawing, primal anxiety that often afflicts women. Votes: 0

As a scholar who regularly surveys archival material, I think that, a century from now, cultural historians will find David Horowitz's spiritual and political odyssey paradigmatic for our time. Votes: 0

I've been a longtime admirer of Condoleezza Rice, because I like her articulateness and style - her toughness and rigor. Votes: 0

American policy seems to be wed to a perpetual state of war. Why? History shows that the world will always be in flux or turmoil, with different peoples competing for visibility and power. The U.S. cannot fix the fate of every nation. Votes: 0

It's high time for the art world to admit that the avant-garde is dead. It was killed by my hero, Andy Warhol, who incorporated into his art all the gaudy commercial imagery of capitalism (like Campbell's soup cans) that most artists had stubbornly scorned. Votes: 0

We live in a period of declining stars. Few celebrities these days (aside from the smoldering Angelina Jolie) seem to have complex psychic lives. Votes: 0

Nature, I have constantly argued in my work, is the real superpower of this godless universe. It is the ultimate disposer of human fate, randomly recarving geography over 10,000-year epochs. Votes: 0

Young feminists have been sold a bill of goods about American feminism. The enormous changes in women over the past 40 years are constantly and falsely attributed to the organized women's movement of the late 1960s and '70s. Votes: 0

If people want to be better writers, they can't just read the blogs! You've got to look at something that's outside this rushing world of evanescent words. Votes: 0

Rule of art: Cant kills creativity! Votes: 0

Although I'm an atheist who believes only in great nature, I recognize the spiritual richness and grandeur of the Roman Catholicism in which I was raised. Votes: 0

Ever since Romanticism, an oppositional mode, artists have the right, and indeed the duty, to attack social convention. But it is ridiculous and in fact self-infantilizing for them to expect to be financially supported by the general public whom they are insulting. Votes: 0

I'm very pro-American - my entire family escaped poverty in Italy because they rightly believed in the American dream. Votes: 0

My problem is that I do not get along with lesbians at all. They don't like me, and I don't like them. Votes: 0

Considering the popularity of soaps with the African-American audience, it's grotesque that the entertainment industry, for all its vaunted liberalism, is lagging so far behind social changes in the United States. And why has there never been an all-black daytime network soap? It would probably blow the white soaps off the map. Votes: 0

As a longtime fan of talk radio, I'm very worried about the low opinion that conservative hosts and callers have of the American artist. Art is portrayed as a scam, a rip-off and snow job pushed by snobbish elites. Votes: 0

Mad Men' doesn't capture one single thing about the decor, costumes, or sexual interaction. It is a total projection of contemporary snarky attitudes into the past. Votes: 0

Manhood coerced into sensitivity is no manhood at all. Votes: 0

As a registered Democrat, I am praying for a credible presidential candidate to emerge from the younger tier of politicians in their late 40s. A governor with executive experience would be ideal. Votes: 0

Woman is the dominant sex. Men have to do all sorts of stuff to prove that they are worthy of woman's attention. Votes: 0

I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passe abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity. Votes: 0

My generation of the Sixties, with all our great ideals, destroyed liberalism, because of our excesses. Votes: 0

I see far stronger and more charismatic personalities strolling around Philadelphia's neighborhoods than are being featured in most of today's bland daytime soaps. Votes: 0

I despise the phony, fancy-pants rhetoric of professors aping jargon-filled European locutions - which have blighted academic film criticism for over 30 years. Votes: 0

I am a registered Democrat who is determined to return my party to the proletarian principles of the Franklin D. Roosevelt era. Votes: 0

Capitalism has its weaknesses. But it is capitalism that ended the stranglehold of the hereditary aristocracies, raised the standard of living for most of the world and enabled the emancipation of women. Votes: 0

The reason I was angry all the time was that Gloria Steinem and all those people, without reading my work, were saying all these horrible things against me. Votes: 0

I don't like reality shows and have never watched them, but I'm addicted to 'Real Housewives' because it's authentic old-time soap opera reborn! Votes: 0

I am waiting impatiently for the day when beleaguered, like-minded academics can order James Wolcott's collected essays for their classes. Votes: 0

Music never dies. Do we really need another Madonna tour? Does she have to compete with women performers 25 years her junior? Votes: 0

I want young women when they're 14 to start thinking about what they want over the course of their lives. Votes: 0

Heaven help the American-born boy with a talent for ballet. Votes: 0

Elizabeth Taylor is, in my opinion, the greatest actress in film history. She instinctively understands the camera and its nonverbal intimacies. Opening her violet eyes, she takes us into the liquid realm of emotion, which she inhabits by Pisces intuition. Richard Burton said that Taylor showed him how to act for the camera. Economy and understatement are essential. At her best, Elizabeth Taylor simply is. An electric, erotic charge vibrates the space between her face and the lens. It is an extra-sensory, pagan phenomenon. Votes: 0

I want to fall on the floor laughing - imagining Hillary Clinton working well in the Senate with everybody else! Oh, give me a break. I've already joked in print that they would need to build her a private cloakroom on the Mall. This is not a woman who has any ability to deal with the mass of humanity. She is the most arrogant, the most moralistic, the most sermonizing and annoying person on earth.... Votes: 0

Madonna is the true feminist. She exposes the puritanism and suffocating ideology of American feminism, which is stuck in an adolescent whining mode. Madonna has taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising control over their lives. Votes: 0

Homosexuality is not 'normal' On the contrary it is a challenge to the norm...Nature exists whether academics like it or not. And in nature, procreation is the single relentless rule. That is the norm. Our sexual bodies were designed for reproduction...No one is born gay. The idea is ridiculous...homosexuality is an adaptation, not an inborn trait.... Votes: 0

When I meet gay men anywhere in the world, there is a spontaneity and a spirit of fun and mischief that lesbians seem incapable of. Votes: 0

American feminism's nose dive began when Kate Millet, that imploding beanbag of poisonous self-pity, declared Freud a sexist. Trying to build a sex theory without studying Freud, women have made nothing but mud pies. Votes: 0

Heterosexual love,. is in sync with cosmic forces. Not everyone has the stomach for daily war with nature. Votes: 0

Male urination really is a kind of accomplishment, an arc of transcendance. A woman merely waters the ground she stands on. Votes: 0

Personality maintains its discreetness by an act of will. Otherwise one person will flow helplessly into another. Votes: 0

Straight men who visit prostitutes are valiantly striving to keep sex free from emotion, duty, family--in other words, from society, religion, and procreative Mother Nature. Votes: 0

[W]earisome as it may seem, women must realize that, in making a commitment to a man, they have merged in his unconscious with his mother and have therefore inherited the ambivalence of that relationship. Votes: 0

I feel genuinely sorry for those who are so blinded by narrow partisanship that they cannot appreciate Limbaugh's energy, intelligence and satiric skill. They live in a box with bags over their heads. Though he and I hardly agree on politics (I voted for Ralph Nader last year and may go Green again in 2004), I respect Limbaugh as a political analyst and deft rhetorician who is a master of the microphone and who knows how to engage and challenge a vast audience. Votes: 0

Anyone who gets his or her political news primarily from the New York Times (which made the ethically challenged carpetbagger Hillary a senator) is a fool. Votes: 0

If someone offends you by speech, you must learn to defend yourself by speech. Votes: 0

Economic analysis is the first principle of Marxism. Professors who were genuine leftists would have challenged the entire economics-driven machinery of American academe the wasteful multidepartmental structure, the divisive pedantry of overspecialization, the cronyism and sycophancy in recruitment and promotion, the boondoggling ostentation of pointless conferences, the exploitation of graduate students and part-time teachers, the subservience of faculty to overpaid administrators, the mediocrity and folly of the ruling cliques of the Modern Language Association. Votes: 0

Your life is a Fellini film, lacking only Anita Ekberg with a cat on her head. Votes: 0

American high schools have physically imprisoned young people, stripped them of civil liberties and fed them a diet of p.c. pap. Votes: 0

Is there intellectual life in America? At present, the answer is no. Votes: 0

Contemporary feminism cut itself off from history and bankrupted itself when it spun its puerile, paranoid fantasy of male oppressors and female sex-object victims. Woman is the dominant sex. Votes: 0

We must accept our pain Change what we can and laugh at the rest Votes: 0

The artist makes art not to save mankind but to save himself. Every benevolent comment by an artist is a fog to cover his tracks, the bloody trail of his assault against reality and others. Votes: 0

Consciousness is a pitiful hostage of its flesh-envelope, whose surges, circuits, and secret murmurings it cannot stay or speed. This is the chthonian drama that has no climax but only an enedless round, cycle upon cycle. Microcosm mirrors macrocosm. Free will is stillborn in the red cells of our body, for there is no free will in nature. Our choices come to us prepackaged and special delivery, molded by hands not our own. Votes: 0

Criticism at its best is re-creative, not spirit-killing. Votes: 0

If people could see the inside of my brain, I would be in prison. Votes: 0

The idea that emotion can be separated from sex is a Christian illusion, one of the most ingenious but finally unworkable strategies in Christianity's ancient campaign against pagan nature.? Votes: 0

Minerva save us from the cloying syrup of coercive compassion! What feminism does not need, it seems to me, is an endless recycling of Doris Day Fifties clichés about noble womanhood. Votes: 0

Very gifted people may be sociopathic in varying degrees. Votes: 0

Capitalism is an art form, an Apollonian fabrication to rival nature. It is hypocritical for feminists and intellectuals to enjoy the pleasures and conveniences of capitalism while sneering at it. Everyone born into capitalism has incurred a debt to it. Give Caesar his due. Votes: 0

We must take the best from the left and the best from the right to devise new strategies for the global twenty-first century. The reluctance of liberal professors to speak out against rampant abuses committed on their side (e.g., suppression of free speech, the excesses of women's studies and French theory) has simply increased the power of the right. Votes: 0

The best introduction by far to representation of the human figure in art. The Nude is a beautifully written work of sophisticated connoisseurship that analyzes art in its own terms rather than imposing strident, politicized categories on it. It outlines the major body types, male and female, in Western art and, via a wealth of illustrations, trains the reader's eye to detect and evaluate proportion. This book reveres art Votes: 0

They do not understand the fragility of civilization and the constant nearness of savage nature. Votes: 0

Liberalism defines government as tyrant father but demands it behave as nurturant mother. Votes: 0

A society that forgets about art risks loslng its soul. Votes: 0

I consider myself 100 percent a feminist, at odds with the feminist establishment in America. For me the great mission of feminism is to seek the full political and legal equality of women with men. However, I disagree with many of my fellow feminists as an equal opportunity feminist, who believes that feminism should only be interested in equal rights before the law. I utterly oppose special protection for women where I think that a lot of the feminist establishment has drifted in the last 20 years. Votes: 0

There are no accidents, only nature throwing her weight around. Even the bomb merely releases energy that nature has put there. Nuclear war would be just a spark in the grandeur of space. Nor can radiation alter nature: she will absorb it all. After the bomb, nature will pick up the cards we have spilled, shuffle them, and begin her game again. Votes: 0

In today's impoverished dialogue, critiques of liberalism are often naively called "conservative," as if twenty-five hundred years of Western intellectual tradition presented no other alternatives. Votes: 0

The western mind makes definitions; it draws lines. Votes: 0

Even a woman of abnormal will cannot escape her hormonal identity. Votes: 0

Elizabeth Taylor is pre-feminist woman. This is the source of her continuing greatness and relevance. She wields the sexual power that feminism cannot explain and has tried to destroy. Through stars like Taylor, we sense the world-disordering impact of legendary women like Delilah, Salome, and Helen of Troy. Feminism has tried to dismiss the femme fatale as a misogynist libel, a hoary clich?. But the femme fatale expresses women's ancient and eternal control of the sexual realm. The specter of the femme fatale stalks all men's relations with women. Votes: 0

Sex IS power. Identity is power. In western culture, there are no nonexploitative relationships. Everyone has killed in order to live. Votes: 0

Despite popular opinion, there are no important parallels between Madonna and Monroe, who was a virtuoso comedienne but who was in secure, depressive, passive-aggressive, and infuriatingly obstructionist in her career habits. Madonna is manic, perfectionist, workaholic. Monroe abused alcohol and drugs, while Madonna shuns them. Monroe had a tentative, melting, dreamy solipsism; Madonna has Judy Holliday's wisecracking smart mouth and Joan Crawford's steel will and bossy, circus master managerial competence. Votes: 0

Today, the ideal male is the gay man and the ideal female is the worker female, the woman who can work in a coal mine just like all the other men. Votes: 0

We should teach general ethics to both men and women, but sexual relationships themselves must not be policed. Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in totalitarian regimes. Votes: 0

Though men may be deep, mentally they are slow. Votes: 0

We will never get great art from women if their education exposes them only to the second-rate and if the idea of greatness itself is denied. Greatness is not a white male trick. Every important world civilization has defined its artistic tradition in elitist terms of distinction and excellence. Votes: 0

A war still rages over the legacy of the 1960s. Votes: 0

As a major contemporary composer, Madonna should not let the eye dictate to the ear. Votes: 0

Because I'm criticizing liberalism, people automatically call me a conservative. This is madness! The idea that somehow one cannot critique liberalism from the left, from the left wing of liberalism. I mean, how can people be so stupid? Votes: 0

Charisma is the numinous aura around a narcissistic personality. It flows outward from a simplicity or unity of being and a composure and controlled vitality. There is gracious accommodation, yet commanding impersonality. Charisma is the radiance produced by the interaction of male and female elements in a gifted personality. The charismatic woman has a masculine force and severity. The charismatic man has an entrancing female beauty. Both are hot and cold, glowing with presexual self love. Votes: 0

Poetry is the way into a spiritual vision of society and the universe. Votes: 0

We cannot have a world where everyone is a victim. "I'm this way because my father made me this way. I'm this way because my husband made me this way." Yes, we are indeed formed by traumas that happen to us. But you must take charge, you must take over, you are responsible. Votes: 0

My argument has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive. Votes: 0

Every man harbors an inner female territory ruled by his mother, from whom he can never entirely break free. Votes: 0

Any woman who stays with her abuser beyond the first incident is complicitous with him. Votes: 0

The capitalist distribution network, a complex chain of factory, transport, warehouse and retail outlet, is one of the greatest male accomplishments in the history of culture. Votes: 0

Beware of the manipulativeness of rich students who were neglected by their parents. They love to turn the campus into hysterical psychodramas of sexual transgression, followed by assertions of parental authority and concern. And don't look for sexual enlightenment from academe, which spews out mountains of books but never looks at life directly. Votes: 0

The born-yesterday French-besotted faddists, addicted sniffers of wet printer's ink, think they're starting on the ground floor; so they're condemned to another hundred years of trial and error. The rest of us can safely ignore them. Votes: 0

I realize now how lucky I was, in the total absence of role models, to have only men to rebel against. Today's women students are meeting their oppressors in dangerously seductive new form, as successful congenial female professors who view themselves as victims of a rigid foreign ideology. Votes: 0

It was in reading Tristam Shandy that I noticed how it is primarily men who gravitate towards the game-playing self-reflexive style. There is an alienation from emotion in it, a Nervous Nelly fear of letting go and being "exposed." As an attitude towards life, it betrays a perpetual adolescence. Those who hurled themselves after Derrida were not the most sophisticated but the most pretentious, and least creative members of my generation of academics. Votes: 0

The post-war "publish or perish" tyranny must end. The profession has become obsessed with quantity rather than quality. [...] One brilliant article should outweigh one mediocre book. Votes: 0

Man has traditionally ruled the social sphere; feminism tells him to move over and share his power. But woman rules the sexual and emotional sphere, and there she has no rival. Victim ideology, a caricature of social history, blocks women from recognition of their dominance in the deepest, most important realm. ? Votes: 0

Ambitious young women today are taught to ignore or suppress every natural instinct, if it conflicts with the feminist agenda posed on them. All literary and artistic works, no matter how great, that document the ambivalence of female sexuality they are trained to dismiss as "misogynous." In other words, their minds are being programmed to secede from their bodies ... there is a huge gap between feminist rhetoric and women's actual sex lives, where feminism is of little help except with a certain stratum of deferential, malleable, white middle-class men. Votes: 0

The Bobbit case, which brought to life the ancient mythic archetype of woman as castrator, demonstrated that women are as aggressive as men and that sex is a dark, dangerous force of nature. But of course the feminist establishment, stuck in its battered-woman blinders, learned nothing as usual from this lurid refutation of its normal views. Classic art works like Bizet's Carmen tell us more about the irrationality of love, jealousy and revenge than do all the pat formulas of the counseling industry. Votes: 0

Men knew that if they devirginized a woman, they could end up dead within twenty-four hours. These controls have been removed. Votes: 0

The [sexual harassment] situation has gotten so out of hand that, in 1993, in one of the first British cases, a plumber was fired for continuing to use the traditional term "ballcock" for the toilet flotation unit, instead of the new politically correct term, sanitized of sexual suggestiveness. This is insane. We are back to the Victorian era, when table legs had to be draped lest they put the thought of ladies' legs into someone's dirty mind. Votes: 0

Lesbian feminists, for all their ideals of sisterhood and solidarity, can treat each other with a fickleness, a parasitic exploitativeness, and vicious spite that have to be seen to be believed. Votes: 0

It is not male hatred of women but male fear of women that is the great universal. Votes: 0

Academic Marxists, with their elitist sense of superiority to popular taste, are the biggest snobs in America. Votes: 0

Sappho and Emily Dickinson are the only woman geniuses in poetic history. Votes: 0

My stress on the truth in sexual stereotypes and on the biologic basis of sex differences is sure to cause controversy. Votes: 0

One of the most startling discoveries of my career was when I realized that the strongest women in the world are not lesbians but heterosexual women, who know how to handle men. Votes: 0

Far from poisoning the mind, pornography shows the deepest truth about sexuality, stripped of romantic veneer. Votes: 0

The Devil is a woman. Votes: 0

The number one problem in academia today is not ignorant students but ignorant professors, who have substituted narrow "expertise" and "theoretical sophistication" (a preposterous term) for breadth and depth of learning in the world history of art and thought. ... Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Overconcentration on any one point is a distortion. This is one of the primary reasons for the dullness and ineptitude of so much twentieth-criticism, as compared to nineteenth-century belles-lettres. Votes: 0

The piddling ignoramuses who deny that there is a distinct, discernible, objective western tradition are just woozy literati. Votes: 0

[W]omen will never be taken seriously until they accept full responsibility for their sexuality. Votes: 0

I cannot be convinced that great artists are moralists. Art is first appearances, then meaning. Votes: 0

Despite hundreds of studies, cause-and-effect relationship between pornography and violence has never been satisfactorily proved. ? Votes: 0

Male mastery in marriage is a social illusion, nurtured by women exhorting their creations to play and walk. At the emotional heart of every marriage is a pietà of mother and son. Votes: 0

Eroticism is mystique; that is, the aura of emotion and imagination around sex. It cannot be 'fixed' by codes of social or moral convenience, whether from the political left or right. For nature's fascism is greater than that of any society. There is a daemonic instability in sexual relations that we may have to accept. Votes: 0

All fear of 'offensive' speech is bourgeois and reactionary. Historically, profane or bawdy language was common in both the upper and the lower classes, who lived together in rural areas amid the untidy facts of nature. Notions of propriety and decorum come to the fore in urbanized periods ruled by an expanding middle class, which is obsessed with cleanliness, respectability, and conformism. Votes: 0

What is pretty in nature is confined to the thin skin of the globe upon which we huddle. Scratch that skin, and nature's daemonic ugliness will erupt. Votes: 0

Western man represents himself, on the political or psychological stage, in a spectacular world-theater. Our personality is innately cinematic, light-charged projections flickering on the screen of Western consciousness. Votes: 0

French rhetorical models are too narrow for the English tradition. Most pernicious of French imports is the notion that there is no person behind a text. Is there anything more affected, aggressive, and relentlessly concrete than a Parisan intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the universe. Votes: 0

How many modern transsexuals are unacknowledged shamans? Perhaps it is to poets they should go for counsel, rather than surgeons. Votes: 0

Profanation and violation are part of the perversity of sex, which never will conform to liberal theories of benevolence. Every model of morally or politically correct sexual behavior will be subverted by nature's daemonic law. Votes: 0

Gay men may seek sex without emotion; lesbians often end up in emotion without sex. Votes: 0

government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior. Votes: 0

Most people aren't sure what's going to happen on a first date. Given that ambiguity, every woman must be totally aware at every moment that she is responsible for every choice she makes. ... protect yourselves. See trouble coming. Votes: 0

Last time I checked, there were no Americans at all in Renaissance art. Votes: 0

Society is an artificial construction, a defense against nature's power. Votes: 0

There are no female geniuses because there are no female Jack-the-Rippers. Votes: 0

Obama's folksy come-on is as bad as Madonna's faux British - and both are in need of fresh inspiration. Votes: 0

The most successful prostitutes are invisible, because the sign of a prostitute's success is her absolute blending with the environment. She's so shrewd, she never becomes visible. She never gets in trouble. She has command of her life, and her clients. Votes: 0

[On Hollywood:] America's greatest achievement. Votes: 0

[On U.S. universities:] The bland leading the bland. Votes: 0

Education has become a prisoner of contemporaneity. Votes: 0

Children are monsters of unbridled egotism and will, for they spring directly from nature, hostile intimations of immorality. Votes: 0

The Dionysian is no picnic. Votes: 0

In 1974 I nearly got into a fistfight with some early academic feminists in a restaurant when I casually alluded to a hormonal element in sex differences. It was utterly unacceptable at that time to think or say such a thing. ... If you have any doubts about the effect of hormones on emotion, libido and aggression, have a chat with a transexual, who must take hormones medically. He or she will set you straight. Votes: 0

Every year, feminists provide more and more evidence for the old charge that women can neither think nor write. Votes: 0

Madonna's great instinctive intelligence was evident to me from her earliest videos. Votes: 0

Madonna has a far profounder vision of sex than do the feminists. She sees both the animality and the artifice. Changing her costume style and hair color virtually every month, Madonna embodies the eternal values of beauty and pleasure. Feminism says, 'No more masks.' Madonna says we are nothing but masks. Through her enormous impact on young women around the world, Madonna is the future of feminism. Votes: 0

I sometimes call my new system 'Italian pagan Catholicism,' but it could more accurately be called 'pragmatic liberalism,' with roots in Enlightenment political philosophy. It is a synthesis of the enduring dual elements in our culture, pagan and Judeo-Christian, Romantic and Classic. Votes: 0

Judeo-Christians have got to respect the pagan truth shown in the popular culture of sex and violence. It's meaningful about the elemental forces of life, the brutality of life and nature. Votes: 0

before feminism was, Paglia was! Votes: 0

Every revolution eventually needs a new revolution. Votes: 0

Poetry is the connecting link between body and mind. Votes: 0

Hollywood, America's greatest modern contribution to world culture, is a business, a religion, an art form, and a state of mind. Votes: 0

my dream is someday to have a bank of TVs, where all the different channels could be on and I could be monitoring them. I would love that. The more the better. I love the tabloid stuff. The trashier the program is, the more I feel it's TV. ... Because that's TV's mode. That's the Age of Hollywood. The idea of PBS - heavy-duty Masterpiece Theater, Bill Moyers - I hate all that. Votes: 0

There you have it: an expensive higher education based on sloganeering, on pat, trite phrases that substitute moral posturing for political reasoning. It's elitism masquerading as egalitarianism. Votes: 0

Visionary idealism is a male art form. The lesbian aesthete does not exist. But if there were one, she would have learned from the perverse male mind. Votes: 0

In sex, man is driven into the very abyss which he flees. He makes a voyage to non-being and back. Votes: 0

Every month, it is woman's fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself. Votes: 0

Every reading is partial, but that does not absolve us from the quest for meaning, which defines us as a species. Votes: 0

There is no true expertise in the humanities without knowing all of the humanities. Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Over-concentration on any one point is a distortion. Votes: 0

Despite crime's omnipresence, things work in society, because biology compels it. Order eventually restores itself, by psychic equilibrium. Votes: 0

Western science is a product of the Apollonian mind: its hope is that by naming and classification, by the cold light of intellect, archaic night can be pushed back and defeated. Votes: 0

Science cannot avert a single thunderbolt. Votes: 0

Pregnancy demonstrates the deterministic character of woman's sexuality. Votes: 0

No one is born gay. The idea is ridiculous, but it is symptomatic of our overpoliticized climate that such assertions are given instant credence by gay activists and their media partisans. I think what gay men are remembering is that they were born different. Votes: 0

In the real world, very smart people fail and mediocre people rise. Part of what makes people fail or succeed are skills that have nothing to do with IQ. Also, the idea that intelligence can be gauged by an IQ test is erroneous. Votes: 0

Freud says, Man fears that his strength will be taken from him by woman, dreads becoming infected with her femininity and then proving himself a weakling. Masculinity must fight off effeminacy day by day. Woman and nature stand ever ready to reduce the male to boy and infant. Votes: 0

Rush Limbaugh is a principled conservative, master broadcaster and stinging social critic who has won his mammoth following through his own energy, individualism and wit. His daily radio show is the one reliable place ordinary citizens can turn to for a different perspective in the blizzard of propaganda and disinformation from the Northeastern media establishment. History will show that Limbaugh was a major force over the past decade in waking this country up from its p.c. coma. Votes: 0

I do not believe in God, but I believe God is man’s greatest idea. Those incapable of religious feeling or those (like hard-core gay activists) who profane sacred ground do not have the imagination to educate the young. … Until the left comes to its senses about the cultural power of religion, the right will continue to broaden its appeal Votes: 0

I support, defend, and admire prostitutes, gay or straight. They do important and necessary work, whether moralists of the Left and Right like it or not. Feminists who think they can abolish the sex trade are in a state of massive delusion. Only a ruthless, fascist regime of vast scale could eradicate the rogue sex impulse that is indistinguishable from the life force. Simply in the Western world, pagan sexuality has survived 2000 years of Judaeo-Christian persecution and is hardly going to be defeated by a few feminists whacking at it with their brooms. Votes: 0

Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive. Votes: 0

It's so tiring to make love to women, it takes forever. I'm too lazy to be a lesbian. Votes: 0

The more woman aims for personal identity and autonomy ... the fiercer will be her struggle with nature - that is, with the intractable physical laws of her own body. And the more nature will punish her: 'Do not dare to be free! For your body does not belong to you.' Votes: 0

And what do Democrats stand for, if they are so ready to defame concerned citizens as the 'mob' - a word betraying a Marie Antoinette delusion of superiority to ordinary mortals. I thought my party was populist, attentive to the needs and wishes of those outside the power structure. And as a product of the 1960s, I thought the Democratic party was passionately committed to freedom of thought and speech. Votes: 0

I guess I'm just a natural warrior. Votes: 0

All great stars are competitive. That's a sign of a true artist - if you don't have the fire of competition deep down inside, you're never going to achieve anything. You have to want to be king of the heap. Votes: 0

Men chase by night those they will not greet by day. Votes: 0

Art is something out of the ordinary commenting on the ordinary. Votes: 0

The saints, many of them women, warred with themselves as well as God. The body has its own animal urges, just as there are attractions and repulsions in sex that modern liberalism cannot face. Votes: 0

What feminism calls patriarchy is simply civilization , an abstract system designed by men but augmented and now co-owned by women. Votes: 0

Foucault is the Cagliostro of our time. Votes: 0

There is a constant rush to judgment in Foucault. He is filled with specious generalizations, false categories, distortions, fudging, pretenses to knowledge in areas where he was ignorant. He had no ability whatsoever to distinguish among historical sources, where he makes terrible blunders. Votes: 0

In insisting, for political purposes, on a sharp division between gay and straight, gay activism, like much of feminism, has become as rigid and repressive as the old order it sought to replace. Votes: 0

Simply follow nature, Rousseau declares. Sade, laughing grimly, agrees. Votes: 0

We remain in the Romantic cycle initiated by Rousseau: liberal idealism canceled by violence, barbarism, disillusionment and cynicism. Votes: 0

My prescription for women entering the war zone of the professions: study football. . . . Women who want to remake the future should look for guidance not to substitute parent figures but to the brash assertions of pagan sport. Votes: 0

Men, gay or straight, can get beauty and lewdness into one image. Women are forever softening, censoring, politicizing. ? Votes: 0

When feminism and gay activism set themselves against organized religion, they have the obligation to put something better in its place. Votes: 0

The Gothic tradition was begun by Ann Radcliffe, a rare example of a woman creating an artistic style. Votes: 0

Greek pederasty honored the erotic magnetism of male adolescence in a way that today brings police to the door. Children are more conscious and perverse than parents like to think. Votes: 0

Capitalism, gaudy and greedy, has been inherent in western aesthetics from ancient Egypt on. It is the mysticism and glamour of things , which take on a personality of their own. As an economic system, it is in the Darwinian line of Sade, not Rousseau. Votes: 0

Mind is a captive of the body. Votes: 0

Our feminist culture at the present moment is completely dependent on capitalism . My grandmother was sill scrubbing clothes on the back porch on a washboard ! Votes: 0

Only utopian liberals could be surprised that the Nazis were art connoisseurs. Votes: 0

Repression is an evolutionary adaptation permitting us to function under the burden of our expanded consciousness. For what we are conscious of could drive us mad. Votes: 0

All the genres of philosophy, science, high art, athletics and politics were invented by men. But by the Promethean law of conflict and capture, woman has a right to seize what she will and vie with man on her own terms. Votes: 0

Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest. Votes: 0

The so-called miracle of birth is nature getting her own way. Votes: 0

Ballet is the body rising. Ballet is ceremonial and hieratic. Its disdain for the commonplace material world is the source of its authority and glamour. Votes: 0

When it defines man as the enemy, feminism is alienating women from their own bodies. Votes: 0

The female body is a chthonian machine, indifferent to the spirit who inhabits it. Votes: 0

[Sarah] Palin is solidifying her status as a bona fide American cultural heroine. Votes: 0

Capitalism is an art form. Votes: 0

Effeminate men have suffered a bad press the world over. Votes: 0

The search for freedom through sex is doomed to failure.? Votes: 0

The unhappy truth is that male homosexuality will never be fully accepted by the heterosexual majority, who are obeying the dictates not of bigoted society or religion but of procreative nature. Votes: 0

The real butches are straight ... dealing with and controlling men makes you stronger. Votes: 0

When feminist discourse is unable to discriminate the drunken fraternity brother from the homicidal maniac, women are in trouble. Votes: 0

Modernization means Westernization. Votes: 0

Feminism, in all fields, has yet to produce a single scholar of the intellectual rank of scores of these learned men [e.g., Bruno Snell, Albin Lesky, Denys Page] in the German and British academic tradition. Votes: 0