I began to see that for some, religion was just a form of politics you couldn’t criticize.
Altogether, if I’d been looking at nothing but the media all these years, I would be a much more discouraged person-especially given the notion that only conflict is news, and that objectivity means being evenhandedly negative.
Always ask the turtle.
No wonder studies show that women’s intellectual self-esteem tends to go down as years of education go up. We have been studying our own absence.
I wonder: If you think of someone you love, do you become a little more like them? I would like to think so.
The road is messy in the way that real life is messy. It leads us out of denial and into reality, out of theory and into practice, out of caution and into action, out of statistics and into stories – in short, out of our heads and into our hearts.
It’s said that the biggest determinant of our lives is whether we see the world as welcoming or hostile. Each becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anybody who is experiencing something is more expert in it than the experts.
After all, hope is a form of planning.
Even the dictionary defines adventurer as “a person who has, enjoys, or seeks adventures,” but adventuress is “a woman who uses unscrupulous means in order to gain wealth or social position.
Not even in a movie had I ever seen a wife with a journey of her own. Marriage was always the happy end, not the beginning. It was the 1950s, and I confused growing up with settling down.
Feminism... is not ‘women as victims’ but women refusing to be victims.
This is a crucial job of being an organizer. You leave a dark basement and try to explain to people in the sunshine what it’s like to live down there. I’ve learned this is best done by bringing these different groups of people together. Those with extra money discover how much more satisfying it is to see talent and fairness grow then to see objects accumulate. Those without money learn the valuable lesson that money doesn’t cure all woes. Instead, it may actually insulate and isolate.
On the road, I learned that the media are not reality; reality is reality.
Now, we are becoming the men we wanted to marry. Once, women were trained to marry a doctor, not be one.
Always look at what people do, not who they are.
We learn most where we know the least.
I’ve noticed that great political leaders are energized by conflict. I’m energized by listening to people’s stories and trying to figure out shared solutions. That’s the work of an organizer.
Perhaps our need to escape into media is a misplaced desire for the journey.
I can go on the road – because I can come home. I come home – because I’m free to leave. Each way of being is more valued in the presence of the other.