Camille Paglia Quotes

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

Simply follow nature, Rousseau declares. Sade, laughing grimly, agrees.

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.

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.

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

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.

government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior.

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

The Devil is a woman.

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

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

I am a very reclusive, private person.

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

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

Art is something out of the ordinary commenting on the ordinary.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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!

When in doubt, I read Oscar Wilde.

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

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.

Mind is a captive of the body.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

The more women succeed and rise up into positions of power, the more remote they become from actual masculine energy.

Once you have become the centre of a conflict in a complex governmental enterprise you have the obligation to resign.

[On Hollywood:] America's greatest achievement.

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

before feminism was, Paglia was!

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

Poetry is the connecting link between body and mind.

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

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.

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.

My advice, as in everything, is to read widely and think for yourself We need more dissent and less dogma.

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.

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.

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

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.