Camille Paglia Quotes

“Any woman who stays with her abuser beyond the first incident is complicitous with him.”

“Art is something out of the ordinary commenting on the ordinary.”

“Beauty is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects, giving them limit, symmetry, proportion. Beauty halts and freezes the melting flux of nature.”

“Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest. They are both amoral and immoral, consciously breaking rules. Their 'evil' look at such times is no human projection: the cat may be the only animal who savors the perverse or reflects upon it.”

“Charisma is the numinous aura around a narcissistic personality. It flows outward from a simplicity or unity of being and a composure and controlled vitality. There is gracious accommodation, yet commanding impersonality. Charisma is the radiance produced by the interaction of male and female elements in a gifted personality. The charismatic woman has a masculine force and severity. The charismatic man has an entrancing female beauty. Both are hot and cold, glowing with presexual self love.”

“Feminism is dead. The movement is absolutely dead. The women's movement tried to suppress dissident voices for way too long. There's no room for dissent.”

“For all the feminist jabber about women being victimized by fashion, it is men who most suffer from conventions of dress. Every day, a woman can choose from an army of personae, femme to butch, and can cut or curl her hair or adorn herself with a staggering variety of artistic aids. But despite the Sixties experiments in peacock dress, no man can rise in the corporate world today, outside the entertainment industry, with long hair or makeup or purple velvet suits.”

“Gay men are guardians of the masculine impulse. To have anonymous sex in a dark alleyway is to pay homage to the dream of male freedom. The unknown stranger is a wandering pagan god. The altar, as in pre-history, is anywhere you kneel.”

“Heaven help the American-born boy with a talent for ballet.”

“I have been studying sexuality since before it became fashionable.”

“I remember turning 'The Sopranos' on once and within two minutes nearly throwing a brick through the screen.”

“If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.”

“If you live in rock and roll, as I do, you see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being aroused by male lust. It attracts women. It doesn't repel them.”

“In the real world, very smart people fail and mediocre people rise. Part of what makes people fail or succeed are skills that have nothing to do with IQ.”

“It is capitalist America that produced the modern independent woman. Never in history have women had more freedom of choice in regard to dress, behavior, career, and sexual orientation.”

“Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist.”

“Manhood coerced into sensitivity is no manhood at all.”

“Men are looking for maternal solace in women, and that's the nature of heterosexuality. Now you tell me, who really has all the power?”

“Men are run ragged by female sexuality all their lives. From the beginning of his life to the end, no man ever fully commands any woman. It's an illusion. Men are p*ssy-whipped. And they know it. That's what the strip clubs are about; not woman as victim, not woman as slave, but woman as goddess.”

“Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.”

“Modern bodybuilding is ritual, religion, sport, art, and science, awash in Western chemistry and mathematics. Defying nature, it surpasses it.”

“My advice, as in everything, is to read widely and think for yourself We need more dissent and less dogma.”

“My argument has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.”

“My problem is that I do not get along with lesbians at all. They don't like me, and I don't like them.”

“Old school feminism, coveting social power, is blind to woman's cosmic sexual power.”

“P*rnography is art, sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant. Its glut and glitter are a Babylonian excess.”

“P*rnography is human imagination in tense theatrical action; its violations are a protest against the violations of our freedom by nature.”

“Pursuit and seduction are the essence of sexuality. It's part of the sizzle.”

“Rule of art: Can't kills creativity!”

“Straight men who visit prostitutes are valiantly striving to keep sex free from emotion, duty, family – in other words, from society, religion, and procreative Mother Nature.”