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Camille Paglia Quotes

born 1947 United States

Camille Paglia (born 2 April 1947) is an American author, scholar, feminist and critic, best known for writing Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, a survey of Western art and literature from earliest recorded history to the 20th Century.

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Random Camille Paglia quote

247 quotes

Even the best critical writing on Emily Dickinson underestimates her. She is frightening.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

Running to Mommy and Daddy on the campus grievance committee is unworthy of strong women.

Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992)

Nefertiti is like Athena born from the brow of Zeus, a head-heavy armored goddess. She is beautiful but desexed.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

The mystique of the femme fatale cannot be perfectly translated into male terms.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Overconcentration on any one point is a distortion.

Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992)

Feminism, coveting social power, is blind to women’s cosmic sexual power.

Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992)

Sappho and Emily Dickinson are the only woman geniuses in poetic history.

Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992)

Everyone of my generation who preached free love is responsible for AIDS.

Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992)

Imperialism and slavery are no white male monopoly, but are everywhere from Egypt, Assyria, and Persia to India, China and Japan.

Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992)

The Sixties attempted a return to nature that ended in disaster.

Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992)

I subscribe to Jung's theory of synchronicity.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

The book of Genesis is a male declaration of independence from the ancient mother-cults. Its challenge to nature, so sexist to modern ears, marks one of the crucial moments in western history.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

It is in the best interests of the human race, and of women themselves, for men to be strong.

Vamps and Tramps (1994)

Every man harbors an inner female territory ruled by his mother, from whom he can never entirely break free.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

Feminists have no idea that some women like to flirt with danger because there is a sizzle in it.

Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992)

The idea that feminism is the first group that has ever denounced rape is a gross libel to men.

Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992)

The dishonesty and speciousness of the feminist rape analysis are demonstrated by its failure to explore, or even mention, man-on-man sex crimes.

Vamps and Tramps (1994)

Patriarchy, routinely blamed for everything, produced the birth control pill, which did more to free contemporary women than feminism itself.

Vamps and Tramps (1994)

Women are not in control of their bodies; nature is. Ancient mythology, with its sinister archetypes of vampire and Gorgon, is more accurate than feminism about the power and terror of female sexuality.

Vamps and Tramps (1994)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Camille Paglia (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.