Skip to content

If there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, there is nothing more ubiquitously pervasive than an idea whose time won't go.

— Elizabeth Janeway

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Man's World, Woman's Place: A Study in Social Mythology (New York: William Morrow and Co, 1971) ch. 1, p. 7
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

More by Elizabeth Janeway

[Power is] the ability not to have to please.

I am not sure how many "sins" I would recognize in the world. Some would surely be defused by changed circumstances. But I can imagine none that is more irredeemably siinful than the betrayal, the exploitation, of the young by those who should care for them.

Incest: A Rational Look at the Oldest Taboo (1981)

All Elizabeth Janeway quotes →

More quotes by Elizabeth Janeway

The Goddamn human race deserves itself, and as far as I'm concerned it can have it.

Accident (1964)

Like their personal lives, women's history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.

Between Myth and Morning: Women Awakening (1974)

Sex cannot be contained within a definition of physical pleasure, it cannot be understood as merely itself for it has stood for too long as a symbol of profound connection between human beings.

Between Myth and Morning: Women Awakening (1974)

Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals; which raises the question, how good are these connections?

Incest: A Rational Look at the Oldest Taboo (1981)

Philosophically, incest asks a fundamental question of our shifting mores: not simply what is normal and what is deviant, but whether such a thing as deviance exists at all in human relationships if they seem satisfactory to those who share them.

Incest: A Rational Look at the Oldest Taboo (1981)

All Elizabeth Janeway quotes →

Attribution

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