Quotes from Germaine Greer

The essence of pleasure is spontaneity.

Women are reputed never to be disgusted. The sad fact is that they often are, but not with men; following the lead of men, they are most often disgusted with themselves

The principle of the brotherhood of man is narcissistic... for the grounds for that love have always been the assumption that we ought to realize that we are the same the whole world over.

I find that those men who are personally most polite to women, who call them angels and all that, cherish in secret the greatest contempt for them.

Until women themselves reject stigma and refuse to feel shame for the way others treat them, they have no hope of achieving full human stature.

If women understand by emancipation the adoption of the masculine role then we are lost indeed.

Every human body has its optimum weight and contour, which only health and efficiency can establish. Whenever we treat women's bodies as aesthetic objects without function we deform them.

Most women still need a room of their own and the only way to find it may be outside their own home.

Too many women are forced to abort by poverty, by their menfolk, by their parents. A choice is only possible if there are genuine alternatives.

There have been women in the past far more daring than we would need to be now, who ventured all and gained a little, but survived after all.

Every time a woman makes herself laugh at her husband's often-told jokes she betrays him. The man who looks at his woman and says 'What would I do without you?' is already destroyed.

Evolution is what it is. The upper classes have always died out; it's one of the most charming things about them.

All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man no society will survive a shortage of women.

Every time a man unburdens his heart to a stranger he reaffirms the love that unites humanity.

Men have still not realized that letting women do so much of the work for so little reward makes a man in the house an expensive luxury rather than a necessity.

The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.

A garden is a kinetic work of art, not an object but a process, open-ended, biodegradable, nurturant, like all women's artistry. A garden is the best alternative therapy.

Perhaps catastrophe is the natural human environment, and even though we spend a good deal of energy trying to get away from it, we are programmed for survival amid catastrophe.

Energy is the power that drives every human being. It is not lost by exertion but maintained by it for it is a faculty of the psyche.

Never advise anyone to go to war or to get married. Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present. He that has no children brings them up well.

Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate

The struggle which is not joyous is the wrong struggle. The joy of the struggle is not hedonism and hilarity, but the sense of purpose, achievement and dignity.

Mother is the dead heart of the family spending father's earnings on consumer goods to enhance the environment in which he eats, sleeps, and watches the television.

A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity.