If we eliminated the dog from our lives, nothing much would happen to our ecology. Independent of man, the dog is a vandal. With m...an, he does a little sheep-herding, a little watch-dogging. He helps law enforcement officers control the troublesome ghetto-dwellers and protest marchers. He sniffs out "hash" and "grass." He goes out on weekends and helps man murder other forms of life for pleasure. But mostly he is just an adjunct to man's ego.... The cat owes man nothing. Some experts estimate that there is one homeless cat managing on its own for every one with a home, which makes a total cat population in the U.S. of more than fifty million. That means the largest nonhuman animal population in the nation, short of rodents, whose number is beyond estimate. Eliminate cats from our ecology and, in a matter of weeks, we would be overrun by rodents.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Women have progressed far beyond the point of no return. They're in medical schools and law schools, and they're inching into the ...upper echelons of the corporate world. They've entered the political arena and are even beginning to make inroads into that ultimate male enclave, the U. S. Congress. They've had a taste of equality, even a taste of power. They've experienced the shift in the balance of power in a marriage that occurs when a wife is earning as much money as her husband. They've experienced the autonomy that comes from being in control of their own reproductive lives. They will almost certainly have to fight for these things again and again, losing ground, gaining ground, running in place. But they will never go back.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To make life more bearable and pleasant for everybody, choose the issues that are significant enough to fight over, and ignore or ...use distraction for those you can let slide that day. Picking your battles will eliminate a number of conflicts, and yet will still leave you feeling in control.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To try to control a nine-month-old's clinginess by forcing him away is a mistake, because it counteracts a normal part of the chil...d's development. To think that the child is clinging to you because he is spoiled is nonsense. Clinginess is not a discipline issue, at least not in the sense of correcting a wrongdoing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't believe there is one woman within the confines of this state who does not believe in birth control. I never met one. That ...is, I never met one who thought that she should be kept in ignorance of contraceptive methods. Many I have met who valued the knowledge they possessed, but thought there were certain other classes who would be better kept in ignorance. The old would protect the young. The rich would keep the poor in ignorance. The good would keep their knowledge from the bad, the strong from the weak.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the black girls didn't get these pills because their black ministers were up on the pulpit saying that birth control pills wer...e black genocide. What I'm saying is that black men have exploited black women.... They didn't want them to have any choice about their reproductive health. And if you can't control your reproduction, you can't control your life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have ... succeeded in enlightening public opinion. We have battered down the prejudice of the press. We have overcome the apath...y and passive indifference of the medical profession. We have awakened the consciousness of the Protestant churches and their ethical leaders to the moral necessity of birth control. Yet this enlightenment, unless directed and applied, will be extinguished by the winds of dogmas unless it is applied like a hydro-electric power to the driving of the machinery of political and legislative action.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't really know how most of my ventures in this work were ever financed. I am of no economical turn of mind. I do things first..., and somehow or another they get paid for. If I had waited to finance my various battles for birth control, I do not suppose they ever would have become realities. I suppose here is the real difference between the idealist--or the "fanatic, as we are called--and the ordinary "normal" human being.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... only a controlled fertility in human beings can maintain any progress. No system of society depending for its continuation on ...intelligent humans can stand long unless it encourages the control of the birth rate and includes contraceptive knowledge as a right. Without it no system, no matter what its ideals, can withstand the overpowering force of uncontrolled, unrestricted fecundity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... an abortion is only horrible, but to deny life is satanic. Why then, I wonder, do priests and nuns remain unmarried? Why then ...are celibacy and self-control approved and exacted? What a priceless ideal for mothers to follow! To continue bearing children misshapen, deformed, hideous to the eyes, in the hope that Heaven may be filled! It's a monstrous doctrine, abhorrent of every civilized instinct in us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »