Naomi Wolf Quotes

Poststructuralism. . . . is a form of literary criticism that uses elaborate wordplay to prove its central premise, that all language is internally contradictory and has no fixed meaning.

What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing, when they slip away from the gaze and culture of men?

I don't think we've got the concept in the West that male desire degrades men. Or that if men become sexually active, they become debased in some way, or slutty. Or lose status.

When I was a baby feminist, leading feminist thinkers were insisting that if women ran the world, there would be no sadism or war.

Protesters should make their own media and not rely on mainstream media to cover them.

Documentary film without nuanced journalistic sourcing risks being sensational, tendentious or broad-brushed.

How is it even sustainable in 21st-century America, that women earn, on average, 77 cents for every dollar earned by men?

I'm a big believer in debate and difference of opinion.

'The End of America' details the 10 steps that would-be dictators always take in seeking to close an open society; it argued that the Bush administration had been advancing each one.

It has been said that each generation must win its own struggle to be free. -Robert F. Kennedy

For all the power of video and film, I am not giving up my pen... together they are more than the sum of their parts.

When women breached the power structure in the 1980s?two economies finally merged. Beauty was no longer just a symbolic form of currency: it literally became money.

It is never smart, even in a strong democracy, to declare some debate off limits. In a weakening democracy it is catastrophic.

Citizens who live or work near protest sites or marches have every right to be free of violence from protesters, and they should never be subjected to destruction of property.

The symbolic value of having an African-American president has certainly eased some racial tensions in America, but they're not gone.

In a fascist shift, reporters start to face more and more harassment, and they have to be more and more courageous simply in order to do their jobs.

There was a bad patch in the '80s and early '90s when feminist thinking had become sort of a monopoly and had developed a series of litmus tests.

With the Internet there is even more fractioning since we are in echo chambers. With so much propaganda it is hard to calm down enough to listen.

We need to get back into grappling with people we disagree with if we want to restore the Republic.

When a leader has deployed a private army, that is one definition of a police state. Another is when the president, or a leader, has his own treasury.

Frankly, liberals are out of the habit of communicating with anyone outside their own in cohort. We have a cultural problem with self-righteousness and elitism.

Millions of people have to restore liberty and have to understand the danger and personal risk they face in a police state.

I don't want people to be suicidal. I want them to be energized and angry.

I don't want to overstate tantra because I'm sure there are scumbags everywhere, but it seems like it's an ideology that actually respects female desire.

Today a woman must ignore her reflection in the eyes of her lover, since he might admire her, and seek it in the gaze of the God of Beauty, in whose perception she is never complete.

I'm asking people to think critically and not to be lazy in their thinking.

Historically, when a leader has deployed his own military against civilians, it's never been good. There's never been a time where it's ended well.

Women are mere "beauties" in men's culture so that culture can be kept male. When women in culture show character, they are not desirable, as opposed to the desirable, artless ingenue.

I'll go anywhere to talk about the Constitution. I believe in trans-partisan organizing around these issues.

I've never understood this puritanical idea that feminism has to be a cult. You know, we all have to think alike or dress alike or have a similar ideology.

She wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to change to truly see her.

Most urgently, women's identity must be premised upon our "beauty" so that we will remain vulnerable to outside approval, carrying the vital sensitive organ of self-esteem exposed to the air.

If women cannot eat the same food as men, we cannot experience equal status in the community.

Are women beautiful or aren't we?

Only God, my dear, ” wrote Yeats blithely, “Could love you for yourself alone/And not your yellow hair.” This quote is meant as a bit of lighthearted verse. But it is an epic tragedy in three lines.

We need to insist on making culture out of our desire: making paintings, novels, plays and films potent and seductive and authentic enough to undermine and overwhelm the Iron Maiden.

Advertisers are the West's courteous censors.

What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired.

Women are mere “beauties” in men’s culture so that culture can be kept male. When women in culture show character, they are not desirable, as opposed to the desirable, artless ingenue.

Some women have become far too proscriptive of other women's pleasures and private arrangements, and the definition of feminism has become ideologically overloaded.

Peaceful, lawful protest - if it is effective - is innately disruptive of 'business as usual.' That is why it is effective.

You do not win by struggling to the top of a caste system, you win by refusing to be trapped within one at all.