Quotes from Barbara Ehrenreich

If you hump away at menial jobs 360-plus days a year, does some kind of repetitive injury of the spirit set in? I don't know and I don't intend to find out, but I can guess that one of the symptoms is a bad case of tunnel vision. Work fills the landscape; coworkers swell to the size of family members or serious foes. Slights loom large, and a reprimand can reverberate into the night.

My religious friends - and my friends were almost all Catholics or Protestants or occasionally something more exotic like Jewish or Greek Orthodox - were convinced that God had a plan for us, and since God was good, it was a good plan, which we were required to endorse even without having any idea what it was. Just sign the paperwork; in other words, don't overintellectualize.

La gran mayoría de los oficinistas despedidos se tragaron el sapo, como se suele decir, y aceptaron que les dieran pensamiento positivo en vez de la nómina mensual y la seguridad de antes. No tomaron las calles, no forzaron ningún cambio en la política, no se presentaron en su ex oficina con una pistola.

El calvinismo y el pensamiento positivo ya se habían visto las caras en el siglo XIX, aunque al segundo se le llamaba entonces Nuevo Pensamiento; cuando volvieron a encontrarse, cerca ya del cambio de milenio, la confrontación ya no fue pública sino que tomó la forma de batalla silenciosa por el dominio del mercado: la audiencia de televisión, las ventas de libros y la asistencia a las iglesias.

The truly sinister possibility is that for many of us, all the little measures we take to remain fit—all the deprivations and exertions—will only lead to a longer chance to live with crippling and humiliating disabilities.

La nueva teología positiva ya no se dedica a hacer juicios de valor tajantes ni a contar historias desgarradoras de sufrimiento y redención: lo que ahora se ofrece en las megaiglesias (y en muchos templos normales) es la promesa de dinero, éxito y salud en esta vida, ahora mismo o dentro de muy poco.

In my experience, any class or assembly restricted to girls was going to be in some way degrading, like the one where we'd been convened to receive the information that from now on our bodies would be producing poisons that would need to be discharged on a monthly basis, through an unspecified orifice. The restriction of the typing requirement to girls suggested some sort of connection between our festering genitals and the need to serve in a clerical-type occupation, perhaps as a punishment.

The scientific argument [...] is that the attribution of agency to the natural world was a mistake, although a useful one in an evolutionary sense. [...] [T]o the contrary, [...] it was the notion of nature as a passive, ultimately inert mechanism that was the mistake, and perhaps the biggest one that humans ever made.

Le voy a decir algo que no le va a gustar: una crisis no es una oportunidad".

You may think of yourself as a freestanding individual, a unique point of consciousness in the universe, but in many ways you are just subbing for absent family members or departed ancestors.

I understood that no one could have lobbed such a stinging wad of shame out into the world without having a considerable personal reserve of it to draw on.

esa chifladura general de los estadounidenses con el pensamiento positivo no sirvió para hacerles más felices.

Drug Testing: A Bad Investment.

1997 there were only thirty-six such units for every one hundred families

So if low-wage workers do not always behave in an economically rational way, that is, as free agents within a capitalist democracy, it is because they dwell in a place that is neither free nor in any way democratic.

A movement that recognizes our biological similarity but denies the diversity of our priorities cannot be a women's health movement, it can only be some women's health movement.

Once I realized I was old enough to die, I decided that I was also old enough not to incur any more suffering, annoyance, or boredom in the pursuit of a longer life." No more annual exams, cancer screenings, mammograms, and any other measure "expected of a responsible person with health insurance….Not only do I reject the torment of a medicalized death, but I refuse to accept a medicalized life.

The shocking thing is that the majority of American workers, about 60 percent, earn less than $14 an hour.

The advice that you must change your environment—for example, by eliminating negative people and news—is an admission that there may in fact be a "real world" out there that is utterly unaffected by our wishes.

Según el plan de los Simonton, la mujer tenía que dedicar parte de la jornada a dibujar batallas entre células con forma de insecto, como si fueran un tebeo. Si en estos dibujos las células cancerosas no aparecían "muy débiles [y] desorientadas", y las de las defensas no se mostraban "fuertes y agresivas", la paciente estaba tonteando con la muerte y tenía que esforzarse un poco más.14

Just now and then, maybe every few weeks and then only for minutes at a time, a breach appeared in the partition and I walked on through, because I have always taken that as a general rule of life: If a door opens, walk on through and at least take a look around.

Most civilized nations compensate for the inadequacy of wages by providing relatively generous public services such as health insurance, free or subsidized child care, subsidized housing, and effective public transportation.

It was a calculated ruling class campaign of terrorization.

The first time I had a pap smear done, I was so traumatized, I now take prescription Xanax to avoid having panic attacks when I get pap smears done now. And I'm only 24. How many more am I going to have to have for the rest of my life? What am I going to do when I want to have children and every doctor wants to shove his/her fingers and tools inside me?