Quotes About Progress

That's why male adults, and some females too, experience the presence of a strong woman as a dangerous regression to a time of their own vulnerability and dependence.

Change seems recognizable only after it's happened, like putting one's foot down for a familiar stair—and it's not there.

In thirty years or so, the majority will no longer be European Americans; the first generation of mostly babies of color has already been born. This new diversity will give us a better understanding of the world and enrich our cultural choices, yet there are people whose sense of identity depends on the old hierarchy.

As I write this, there are mainstream educators trying to discredit efforts to diversify the academic canon by giving them the dreaded label "politically correct"—now known familiarly on campus as "P.C." (which, as Robin Morgan has pointed out, might well stand for "Plain Courtesy")—as if centuries of exclusion had not been the height (or depth) of politics.

I don't think feminism can just be imitative or integrationist. By definition, it must transform. But in the short run, there are goals we agree on. And it's in the short run that we must act.

We're not having a revolution, but an evolution.

In retrospect, the second cause for delay makes less feminist sense: the long popularity of assertiveness training. Though most women needed to be more assertive (or even more aggressive, though that word was considered too controversial), many assertiveness courses taught women how to play the existing game, not how to change the rules.

Campaign season is the only time of public debate about what we want for the future. It can change consciousness even more than who gets elected. In short, campaigns may be the closest thing we have to democracy itself.

It was a constitutional convention for the female half of the country. After all, we had been excluded from the first one.

It seems more hopeful to talk about what came before patriarchy--and could show us a way beyond it.

Progress itself is rooted in a seasonal journey. Perhaps our need to escape into media is a misplaced desire for the journey.

In Indian Country," he says, "we have a different sense of time. I'm learning and you're learning—and more will.

Altogether I've seen enough change to have faith that more will come.

Since learning causes our brains to grow new synapses, I like to believe that the road is sharpening

You're going to make mistakes, and you will learn from them. Say you're sorry, ask what you could have done better, learn - and move on.

campuses not only help create social justice movements, they need them.

the word still entered my life - as in "Oh, you're still travelling" ...

Between what is and what could be?

Evolution intended us to be travelers….Settlement for any length of time, in cave or castle, has at best been…a drop in the ocean of evolutionary time.

always in the familiar land of the temporary

Saying politics is dirty is just a way of keeping us from changing the politics of our own lives.

The accusation that feminism is bad for the family leads to understanding that it's bad for the patriarchal variety, but good for democratic families that are the basis of democracy.

How do I love campuses? Let me count the ways. I

stewardesses of the 1960s had filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), trying to change the "no men, no marriage" policy of their job. Aileen Hernandez, the only female or African American on the EEOC, supported them. Years later they finally won, but the airlines called the ruling "improper" because Hernandez, after leaving the EEOC, had become president of the National Organization for Women. A judge actually agreed.