Debora Spar Quotes

#1. We've reached the point where the demand for rules is about to replace the demand for chaos.

Debora Spar

#2. I think what women are doing to themselves is that they're seeing these different images of perfection - the perfect wife, the perfect mother, the perfect career person, the perfect movie star - and they're somehow thinking that they should be all of these things, and that's the problem.

Debora Spar

#3. If we don't find a way to keep women in the workforce, keep them productive, keep them happy, we are literally just throwing our investment down the drain, and we can't afford to do that.

Debora Spar

#4. Don't fight the waves. Dive under, bob up, or catch the curl and ride the wave. The ocean is stronger than you; you might as well be a matchstick in comparison. But if you yield to the waves, they carry you, their power becomes you. ~ Elizabeth Cunningham

Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

#5. I think one thing that women can do is to just be more honest, with themselves and with their friends, and be more willing to say I'm really excited about this part of my life, but I'm screwing up over here, or this is a mistake I've made, or this is something I've given up on.

Debora Spar

#6. The book is even quirkier, but it's hard to bring all of that stuff to a movie. With a book, you use your imagination more and create your own way to make it all make sense.

Jemaine Clement

#7. Strive not for perfection..but for lives and loves that matter.

Debora Spar

#8. 'Maybe' is what gets us into trouble, because I think constantly women are saying I'll try to do it, maybe I'll do it, I'll do it if I can, and then they're feeling guilty when inevitably they can't do everything.

Debora Spar

#9. It's oppressive ... It's food, it's clothing, it's all the magazines that come under the heading of things looking simple. Men's magazines don't seem to do this. They seem to be about things that are fun, not things you have to spend lots of hours on and then fail at.

Debora Spar

#10. The anonymous puts the name in place, leaves it empty, as if the name were there only to let itself be passed through because the name does not name, but is the non-unity and non-presence of the nameless.

Maurice Blanchot

#11. Education and all sorts of horrible things are going to happen to me.

C.S. Lewis

#12. As a result, ostensibly liberated women often found themselves struggling with three full-time jobs: working inside the home, working outside the home, and trying to be thin.

Debora L. Spar

#13. It's a good day when a goddess gets on the school-bus with you.

Barry Lyga

#14. It was feminism that made it possible for women to go to the Ivy League and women to be astronauts and women to have their own TV shows. What happened, though, was that the generation after feminism, which is my generation, misunderstood what feminism was saying.

Debora Spar

#15. I think sometimes by portraying our lives as being too perfect, as being too balanced, we're actually selling younger women a bill of goods that's not true.

Debora Spar

#16. Don't take too much credit for your children - or too much blame!

Debora Spar

#17. Giants. They can't all be horrible. . . . It's the same sort of prejudice that people have toward werewolves. . . . It's just bigotry, isn't it?

J.K. Rowling

#18. They're coming out of high school exhausted. The pressure in high school is killing these kids. By the time they get to college, they have been fighting for three or four years to get the perfect SAT scores and get into A.P. classes.

Debora Spar

#19. Rather than seeing the opportunities that feminism created they very easy morph into expectations.

Debora Spar

#20. Can I, just one time, play the good guy?

Clancy Brown

#21. I certainly want to be ambitious for women. I'm ambitious for myself. I think women can definitely find areas in which they want to excel.

Debora Spar

#22. We must ... forge partnerships with those around us, and begin to dismantle the myth of solitary perfection.

Debora Spar

#23. If two people have a couple of kids, somebody does have to take care of the kids. Somebody does have to cook dinner; somebody does have to do garbage duty. We need to take some time and give some thought, without being angry, to just thinking about what these new structures are going to look like.

Debora Spar

#24. I was in a book group in 1973," she recounted. "We read The Feminine Mystique one week, and the next week everyone went out and got a job. The book group never met again.

Debora L. Spar

#25. I certainly wouldn't go back and blame feminism, because all that feminism was really trying to do, which was huge, was to create a new set of expectations, a new set of opportunities for women, and they did.

Debora Spar

#26. Women are racing all the time to try to have a perfect house and perfect kids and be a perfect cook. Men, somehow, for whatever reason, seem to be better able to pick and choose, to focus on things they like and that are important to them, and let the other things go.

Debora Spar