Vicki Larson > Vicki's Quotes

“The most dangerous phrase in the language is we've always done”
― Grace Hopper

“Monogamy is a way of getting the versions of ourselves down to the minimum.”
― Adam Phillips, Monogamy

“Never before in history had societies thought that such a set of high expectations about marriage was either realistic or desirable. Although many Europeans and Americans found tremendous joy in building their relationships around these values, the adoption of these unprecedented goals for marriage had unanticipated and revolutionary consequences that have since come to threaten the stability of the entire institution.”
― Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage

“Love has triumphed over marriage but now it is destroying it from inside”
― Pascal Bruckner, Has Marriage for Love Failed

“Liberating ourselves from the traditional strictures of marriage altogether, and/or transforming those strictures to include all of us -- gay, feminist, career-focused, baby crazy, monogamous, non-monogamous, skeptical, romantic, and everyone in between -- is the challenge facing this generation. As we consciously opt out or creatively reimagine marriage one loving couple at a time, we'll be able to shift societal expectations wholesale, freeing younger generations from some of the antiquated assumptions we've faced (that women always want to get married and men always shy away from commitment, that gender parity somehow disempowers men, that turning 30 makes an unmarried woman into an old maid).”
― Courtney E. Martin, Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists

“One of the most valuable things we can learn from open sexual lifestyles is that our programming is changeable.”
― Dossie Easton, The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities

“I had wanted to get married, but I realized now that I never wanted to be a 'wife.”
― Jill Bialosky, The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage

“Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice.”
― Fromm, Eric, The Art of Loving

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”
― Erich Fromm

“If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.”
― Erich Fromm

“One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.”
― Erich Fromm

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others”
― Martha Graham

“Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“A woman who goes through life without taking any notice of society's perception of her becomes the most feared individual on the planet. This is because patriarchy wants to reduce her to an insecure, submissive female and as long as she rejects the notion of validation, she is perceived as a threat to the status quo.”
― Mohadesa Najumi