My religious friends - and my friends were almost all Catholics or Protestants or occasionally something more exotic like Jewish or Greek Orthodox - were convinced that God had a "plan" for us, and since God was good, it was a good plan, which we were required to endorse even without having any idea what it was. Just sign the paperwork; in other words, don't overintellectualize.

— Barbara Ehrenreich

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.

— Barbara Ehrenreich

Of all the nasty outcomes predicted for women's liberation...none was more alarming than the suggestion that women would eventually become just like men.

— Barbara Ehrenreich

Once I stand and watch helplessly while some rug rat pulls everything he can reach off the racks, and the thought that abortion is wasted on the unborn must show on my face, because his mother finally tells him to stop.

— Barbara Ehrenreich

Personally, I can't see why it would be any less romantic to find a husband in a nice four-color catalog than in the average downtown bar at happy hour.

— Barbara Ehrenreich

Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a shortage of money.

— Barbara Ehrenreich

She represents something about the corporate world that repel me, some deep coldness masked as relentless cheerfulness.

— Barbara Ehrenreich

Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent.

— Barbara Ehrenreich

That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing - the truly democratic thing about it - is that you don't even have to be a player to lose.

— Barbara Ehrenreich

That's what "meaning" is—a special additive like salt or garlic that could make even the most fetid piece of meat seem palpable, even delicious.

— Barbara Ehrenreich