Riane Eisler Quotes

#1. To heal ourselves we also have to heal society.

Riane Eisler

#2. The link between intimate violence in the home and the international violence of terrorism and war is as tightly bound together as the fingers of a clenched fist.

Riane Eisler

#3. Gender relationships, which are tough for people to deal with, are key to whether a society orients to domination or partnership in all its relations.

Riane Eisler

#4. When the status and power of women is greater so also is the nation's general quality of life; when they are lower, so is the quality of life for all.

Riane Eisler

#5. To change our realities, we also have to change our myths. As history amply demonstrates, myths and realities go hand in hand.

Riane Eisler

#6. Religion supports and perpetuates the social organization it reflects.

Riane Eisler

#7. Rather than being any longer a threat to the established androcratic order, Christianity became what practically all this earth's religions, launched in the name of spiritual enlightenment and freedom, have also become: a powerful way of perpetuating that order.

Riane Eisler

#8. War and the 'war of the sexes' are neither divinely nor biologically ordained.

Riane Eisler

#9. Obviously there is pain in childbirth. But giving birth is also a moment of awe and wonder, a moment when the true miracle of aliveness, and of a woman's amazing part in that miracle, is suddenly experienced in every cell of one's body. It is in that sense truly an altered state of consciousness.

Riane Eisler

#10. In sum, the struggle for our future is ... the struggle between those who cling to patterns of domination and those working for a more equitable partnership world.

Riane Eisler

#11. it is evident that there is another logical alternative: that there can be societies in which difference is not necessarily equated with inferiority or superiority.

Riane Eisler

#12. For new ideas to be translated into new realities requires not only clarity of vision but also the opportunity to change old realities.

Riane Eisler

#13. Indeed, if we look closely at the art of the Neolithic, it is truly astonishing how much of its Goddess imagery has survived - and that most standard works on the history of religion fail to bring out this fascinating fact.

Riane Eisler

#14. At the core of every child is an intact human.

Riane Eisler

#15. Can we really expect adequate funding for programs to clean up our environment and care for people's basic needs as long as the socially essential work of caretaking and cleaning is relegated to women for little or no pay?

Riane Eisler

#16. Nonviolent Communication is a powerful tool for peace and partnership. It shows us how to listen empathically and also communicate our authentic feelings and needs. Marshall Rosenberg has a genius for developing and teaching practical skills urgently needed for a less violent, more caring world.

Riane Eisler

#17. The only life many of the leaders of the anti-family planning movement seem to care about
indeed obsess about
is life before birth and after death.

Riane Eisler

#18. [On the ancient Venus figurines:] If the central religious figure was a woman giving birth and not, as in our time, a man dying on a cross, it would not be unreasonable to infer that life and the love of life - rather than death and the fear of death - were dominant in society as well as art.

Riane Eisler