Quotes by Barbara Ehrenreich

About Barbara Ehrenreich:

Barbara Ehrenreich is an American author and political activist who describes herself as "a myth buster by trade", and has been called "a veteran muckraker" by The New Yorker. During the 1980s and early 1990s she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. She is a widely read and award-winning columnist and essayist, and author of 21 books. Ehrenreich is perhaps best known for her 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. A memoir of Ehrenreich's three-month experiment surviving on minimum wage as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart clerk, it was described by Newsweek magazine as "jarring" and "full of riveting grit", and by The New Yorker as an "exposé" putting "human flesh on the bones of such abstractions as 'living wage' and 'affordable housing'".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

In 1993, 89 of the 'Fortune' top 100 companies were administering the Myers-Briggs test to their employees. The philosophy behind personality tests is that they don't want you to be in the wrong kind of job. The tests have been completely exposed as ...

Barbara Ehrenreich

As anyone knows who has ever had to set up a military encampment or build a village from the ground up, occupations pose staggering logistical problems.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Whenever people can access deities directly without the intervention of a religious hierarchy, they don't need to have hierarchy so much.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Yes, I think especially the Pentecostal churches, you know, that there's been such a growth in Pentecostalism. And it's a rejection of the much more dour and barren kind of Calvinist worship and also, the very formal Catholic forms of worship.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Well, I certainly wouldn't want to live in the 18th century myself, or the 19th either, for that matter.

Barbara Ehrenreich

When I was 13, I had these episodes where I could just see the world without any words attached to it, without any associations. It was a little bit spooky. A lot of people might have even thought it was pathological. I thought it was interesting.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Of all the nasty outcomes predicted for women's liberation...none was more alarming than the suggestion that women would eventually become just like men.

Barbara Ehrenreich

She represents something about the corporate world that repel me, some deep coldness masked as relentless cheerfulness.

Barbara Ehrenreich

In books, coaching sessions, and networking events aimed at the white-collar unemployed, the seeker soon encounters ideologies that are explicitly hostile to any larger, social understanding of his or her situation. The most blatant of these, in my e...

Barbara Ehrenreich

I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease. Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, or course, stop to kick a pedestrian who has already been hit. From which...

Barbara Ehrenreich

In matters of the heart as well, a certain level of negativity and suspicion is universally recommended. You may try to project a thoroughly positive outlook in order to attract a potential boyfriend, but you are also advised to Google him.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a shortage of money.

Barbara Ehrenreich

If I get incensed about some injustice, you can't make me - I will not just going to sit at my desk, at my computer all the time. I - I might want to march out on that.

Barbara Ehrenreich

There's a lot of cruelty going on all the time, and I'm not just talking about inter-human cruelty. I'm talking about whole species becoming extinct, asteroids hitting planets, black holes gobbling up stars.

Barbara Ehrenreich

The one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks.

Barbara Ehrenreich

I haven't seen much socially redeeming about religion. I'm an atheist. I don't here want to get into the Hitchens- or Dawkins-style attack on religion. I was raised on that. It's boring.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Personally, I can't see why it would be any less romantic to find a husband in a nice four-color catalogue than in the average downtown bar at happy hour.

Barbara Ehrenreich

It was a very big principle in my upbringing that you should respect everybody's work. The street sweeper. Everybody. You should never look down on anybody for their work.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Experimental science is fascinating, but I don't want to do it. I want other people to do it, and I'll read about it.

Barbara Ehrenreich

I have a Ph.D. in cell biology. And that's really manual labor. I mean, experimental science, you do it with your hands. So it's very different. You're out there in a lab, cleaning test tubes, and it just wasn't that fascinating.

Barbara Ehrenreich

I went into science, ending up with a Ph.D. in cell biology, but along the way I found out that experimental science involves many hours and days and nights of laboratory work, which is a lot like washing dishes, only a little more challenging. I was...

Barbara Ehrenreich

Author Bio

  • NameBarbara Ehrenreich
  • DescriptionAmerican writer and journalist
  • BornAugust 26, 1941
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionJournalist; Writer; Historian; Novelist
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; Humanist Of The Year; Four Freedoms Award - Freedom From Want