Great Throughts Treasury

"Why indeed must “God” be a noun?... The anthropomorphic symbols for God may be intended to convey personality, but they fail to convey that God is BE-ing."

"It is the creative potential itself in human beings that is the image of God."

"Courage is like -- it's a habitus, a habit, a virtue: you get it by courageous acts. It's like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging."

"A woman's asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person's demanding equality in the Ku Klux Klan."

"Another kind of transcendence myth has been dramatization of human life in terms of conflict and vindication. This focuses upon the situation of oppression and the struggle for liberation. It is a short-circuited transcendence when the struggle against oppression becomes an end in itself, the focal point of all meaning. There is an inherent contradiction in the idea that those devoted to a cause have found their whole meaning in the struggle, so that the desired victory becomes implicitly an undesirable meaninglessness. Such a truncated vision is one of the pitfalls of theologies of the oppressed. Sometimes black theology, for example that of James Cone, resounds with a cry for vengeance and is fiercely biblical and patriarchal. It transcends religion as a crutch (the separation and return of much old-fashioned Negro spirituality) but tends to settle for being religion as a gun. Tailored to fit only the situation of racial oppression, it inspires a will to vindication but leaves unexplored other dimensions of liberation. It does not get beyond the sexist models internalized by the self and controlling society ? models that are at the root of racism and that perpetuate it. The Black God and the Black Messiah apparently are merely the same patriarchs after a pigmentation operation ? their behavior unaltered."

"Courage to be is the key to the revelatory power of the feminist revolution."

"'God's plan' is often a front for men's plans and a cover for inadequacy, ignorance, and evil."

"I had explained that a woman's asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person's demanding equality in the Ku Klux Klan."

"If God is male, then male is God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to live on in the human imagination."

"Since women on average survive men by a significant number of years, it should not be surprising that gynecology is functioning to remedy this unacceptable situation."

"Ever since childhood, I have been honing my skills for living the life of a Radical Feminist Pirate and cultivating the Courage to Sin,? she wrote in the opening of ?Sin Big.? ?The word ?sin? is derived from the Indo-European root ?es-,? meaning ?to be.? When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a woman trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, ?to be? in the fullest sense is ?to sin.?"

"Patriarchy is the homeland of males; it is Father Land; and men are its agents."

"Males do indeed deeply identify with "unwanted fetal tissue," for they sense as their own condition the role of controller, possessor, inhabitor of women. Draining female energy, they feel "fetal." Since this perpetual fetal state is fatal to the Self of the eternal mother (Hostess), males fear women's recognition of this real condition, which would render them infinitely "unwanted." For this attraction/need of males for female energy, seen for what it is, is necrophilia -- not in the sense of love for actual corpses, but of love for those victimized into a state of living death."

"The gynecological profession and the popularizing media have combined their efforts to make the poisoning of women appear acceptable. Just as popping The Pill is both "normal" and normative for younger women, so is estrogen replacement therapy for their mothers and older sisters."

"The fact is that we live in a profoundly anti-female society, a misogynistic ?civilization? in which men collectively victimize women, attacking us as personifications of their own paranoid fears, as The Enemy. Within this society it is men who rape, who sap women?s energy, who deny women economic and political power."

"The word ?sin? is derived from the Indo-European root ?es-,? meaning ?to be.? When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a [person] trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, ?to be? in the fullest sense is ?to sin'."

"There are and will be those who think I have gone overboard. Let them rest assured that this assessment is correct, probably beyond their wildest imagination, and that I will continue to do so."

"Tokenism does not change stereotypes of social systems but works to preserve them, since it dulls the revolutionary impulse."

"Women have had the power of naming stolen from us."

"We will look upon the earth and her sister planets as being with us, not for us. One does not rape a sister."

"Women who are Pirates in a phallocentric society are involved in a complex operation. First, it is necessary to Plunder -- that is, righteously rip off -- gems of knowledge that the patriarchs have stolen from us. Second, we must Smuggle back to other women our Plundered treasures. In order to invert strategies that will be big and bold enough for the next millennium, it is crucial that women share our experiences: the chances we have taken and the choices that have kept us alive. They are my Pirate's battle cry and wake-up call for women who I want to hear."

"Work is a substitute "religious" experience for many workaholics."

"You guard against decay, in general, and stagnation, by moving, by continuing to move."