Germaine Greer Quotes

Women over fifty already form one of the largest groups in the population structure of the western world. As long as they like themselves, they will not be an oppressed minority. In order to like themselves they must reject trivialization by others of who and what they are. A grown woman should not have to masquerade as a girl in order to remain in the land of the living.

"Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark ... In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed."

[Still in Melbourne January 1987]

The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed. For a long time there may be no perceptible reward for women other than their new sense of purpose and integrity. Joy does not mean riotous glee, but it does mean the purposive employment of energy in a self-chosen enterprise. It does mean pride and confidence. It does mean communication and cooperation with others based on delight in their company and your own. To be emancipated from helplessness and need and walk freely upon the earth that is your birthright. To refuse hobbles and deformity and take possession of your body and glory in its power, accepting its own laws of loveliness. To have something to desire, something to make, something to achieve, and at last something genuine to give. To be freed from guilt and shame and the tireless self-discipline of women. To stop pretending and dissembling, cajoling and manipulating, and begin to control and sympathize. To claim the masculine virtues of magnanimity and generosity and courage. It goes much further than equal pay for equal work, for it ought to revolutionise the conditions of work completely. It does not understand the phrase 'equality of opportunity', for it seems that the opportunities will have to be utterly changed and women's souls changed so that they desire opportunity instead of shrinking from it.

It is agreed that little girls should have a different physical education than little boys, but it is not admitted how much of the difference is counseled by the conviction that little girls should not look like little boys.

There are enough women prepared to boast of having got
a man in a million to persuade other women that their failure to find
a man rich enough, handsome enough, skilled enough as a lover,
considerate enough, is a reflection of their inferior deserts or powers
of attraction. More than half the housewives in this country work
outside the home as well as inside it because their husbands do not
earn enough money to support them and their children at a decent
living standard. Still more know that their husbands are paunchy,
short, unathletic, and snore or smell or leave their clothes lying
around. A very high proportion do not find bliss in the conjugal
embrace and most complain that their husbands forget the little
things that count. And yet the myth is not invalidated as a myth

Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful.

Every wife who slaves to keep herself pretty, to cook her husband's favourite meals, to build up his pride and confidence in himself at the expense of his sense of reality, to be his closest and effectively his only friend, to encourage him to rejectthe consensus of opinionand find reassurance only in her arms is binding her mate to her with hoops of steel that will strangle them both.

The few men who do a hand's turn around the house expect gratitude and recognition, so sure are they that, though it is their dirt, it is not their job.

If we could present an attainable ideal of love it would resemble
the relationship described by Maslow as existing between self-realizing
personalities. It is probably a fairly perilous equilibrium: certainly
the forces of order and civilization react fairly directly to
limit the possibilities of self-realization. Maslow describes his ideal
personalities as having a better perception of reality — what Herbert
Read called an innocent eye, like the eye of the child who does not
seek to reject reality. Their relationship to the world of phenomena
is not governed by their personal necessity to exploit it or be exploited
by it, but a desire to observe it and to understand it. They
have no disgust; the unknown does not frighten them. They are
without defensiveness or affectation. The only causes of regret are
laziness, outbursts of temper, hurting others, prejudice, jealousy and
envy. Their behaviour is spontaneous but it corresponds to an
autonomous moral code. Their thinking is problem-centred, not egocentred
and therefore they most often have a sense of commitment
to a cause beyond their daily concerns. Their responses are geared
to the present

What is certain is that he [the baby] has too much attention from the one person who is entirely at his disposal. The intimacy between mother and child is not sustaining and healthy. The child learns to exploit his mother's accessibility, badgering her with questions and demands which are not of any real consequence to him, embarrassing her in public, blackmailing her into buying sweets and carrying him.

The essence of pleasure is spontaneity.

Next time round Hitler will be a machine.

Once a paper admits any principle of censorship for survival, the we-don't-want-to-do-it-but-we-don't-want-to-lose-the-printer kind of censorship, it jeopardizes the integrity of its editorial principle. It's better to print and be damned, because you'll be damned anyway.

Kinkiness comes from low energy. It's the substitution of lechery for lust.

It is agreed that 'girls take more bringing up' than boys: what that really means is that girls must be more relentlessly supervised and repressed if the desired result is to ensue.