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Camille Paglia

43 quotes

Camille Paglia (born 1947) is an American cultural critic, feminist, and author known for her provocative and iconoclastic views on art, literature, sex, and politics. Her book *Sexual Personae* challenged mainstream feminist thought and established her as one of the most controversial and stimulating public intellectuals of her generation.

“Over the past 20 years, I have noticed that the most flexible, dynamic, inquisitive minds among my students have been industrial design majors. Industrial designers are bracingly free of ideology and cant. The industrial designer is trained to be a clear-eyed observer of the commercial world - which, like it or not, is modern reality.”

— Camille Paglia

Design

All Quotes by Camille Paglia

“Working moms commonly testify that they feel guilty when they are away from their children and guilty when they are not at their jobs. Devoted fathers certainly miss their children deeply, but it does not seem to be with the same gnawing, primal anxiety that often afflicts women.”

— Camille Paglia

Women

“American policy seems to be wed to a perpetual state of war. Why? History shows that the world will always be in flux or turmoil, with different peoples competing for visibility and power. The U.S. cannot fix the fate of every nation.”

— Camille Paglia

History

“Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not, he just falls back into her and is swallowed up.”

— Camille Paglia

Mom

“Our liberal, New York/Washington-based media would never in a million years put Liberal Godfather Ted Kennedy on the spot about his clan's bad behavior, to whose lurid history he himself has contributed so much.”

— Camille Paglia

History

“Capitalism has its weaknesses. But it is capitalism that ended the stranglehold of the hereditary aristocracies, raised the standard of living for most of the world and enabled the emancipation of women.”

— Camille Paglia

Women

“Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera, theater, music and dance are thriving all over the world, but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s.”

— Camille Paglia

Art

“And what do Democrats stand for, if they are so ready to defame concerned citizens as the 'mob' - a word betraying a Marie Antoinette delusion of superiority to ordinary mortals. I thought my party was populist, attentive to the needs and wishes of those outside the power structure. And as a product of the 1960s, I thought the Democratic party was passionately committed to freedom of thought and speech.”

— Camille Paglia

Freedom

“A war still rages over the legacy of the 1960s.”

— Camille Paglia

War

“Madonna remains the most visible performer on the planet, as well as one of the wealthiest, but would anyone seriously say that artistic self-development is her primary motivating principle? She is too busy with Kabbalah, fashion merchandising, adoption melodramas, the gym, and ill-starred horseback riding to study art.”

— Camille Paglia

Art

“I respect the astute and rigorously unsentimental David Horowitz as one of America's most original and courageous political analysts. He has the true 1960s spirit - audacious and irreverent, yet passionately engaged and committed to social change.”

— Camille Paglia

Change

“A serious problem in America is the gap between academe and the mass media, which is our culture. Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy.”

— Camille Paglia

Knowledge

“High Romanticism shows you nature in all its harsh and lovely metamorphoses. Flood, fire and quake fling us back to the primal struggle for survival and reveal our gross dependency on mammoth, still mysterious forces.”

— Camille Paglia

Nature

“A lesser complaint: hair extensions. There are moments on 'All My Children' when half the women actors, young and old, seem to be afflicted by android Barbie creep. All those thick swatches of lifeless strands clustering lankly round ladies' necks! Like orange tanning spray, this is a fashion fad that should be put out of its misery.”

— Camille Paglia

Women

“Perhaps there is no greater issue facing contemporary women than the choices they must make about balancing home and work.”

— Camille Paglia

Home

“Rule of art: Cant kills creativity!”

— Camille Paglia

Art

“Except for naval and air exercises, our military should be stationed on American soil, where service men and women can lead normal lives in close proximity to family and friends.”

— Camille Paglia

Family

“My generation of bossy, confident, baby-boom women were something brand new in history. Our energy and assertiveness weren't created by Betty Friedan, unknown before her 1963 book, or by Gloria Steinem, whose political activism, as even the Lifetime profile admitted, did not begin until 1969.”

— Camille Paglia

History

“Woman is the dominant sex. Men have to do all sorts of stuff to prove that they are worthy of woman's attention.”

— Camille Paglia

Men

“When anything goes, it's women who lose.”

— Camille Paglia

Women

“Because of my own family's service (in the U.S. Army, Navy, and Massachusetts and New York National Guard), I am a strong supporter of the military and do believe that there are just wars.”

— Camille Paglia

Family