Skip to content

On a world scale, militant nationalism has followed economic globalism as surely as it once followed colonialism; but while it has served as an outlet for strong and deadly emotions, it has never solved the economic and social problems that provoked it.

— Ellen Willis Don't Think, Smile!: Notes on a Decade of Denial (1999)

Another quote →

More quotes by Ellen Willis

Individuals bearing witness do not change history; only movements that understand their social world can do that.

Individuals bearing witness cannot do the work of social movements, but they can break a corrosive and demoralizing silence.

In practice, attempts to sort out good erotica from bad porn inevitably comes down to "What turns me on is erotic; what turns you on is pornographic."

Today, anxiety is a first principle of social life, and the right knows how to exploit it. Capital foments the insecurity that impels people to submit to its demands.

By definition, the conventional wisdom of the day is widely accepted, continually reiterated and regarded not as ideology but as reality itself. Rebelling against "reality," even when its limitations are clearly perceived, is always difficult.

All Ellen Willis quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ellen Willis (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.