FLORYNCE KENNEDY

When a system of oppression has become institutionalized it is unnecessary for individuals to be oppressive.

The question arises whether all lawyers are the same. This is like asking whether everything that gets into a sewer is garbage.

Everybody's scared for their ass. There aren't too many people ready to die for racism. They'll kill for racism but they won't die for racism.

If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.

I approve of anyone wearing what the establishment says you must not wear.

I think we should look forward to death more than we do. Of course everybody hates to go to bed or miss anything, but dying is really the only chance we'll get to rest.

Don't agonize, organize.

At my age...I'm going to do what I want and I haven't got time for anything else.

What you must understand is oppression does not end with the niggers. It does not end with the poor people, it doesn't end with the women, or the pregnant women. It goes on up the line to the executive who has his bag searched in the airport.

Unity in a Movement situation can be overrated. If you were the Establishment, which would you rather see coming in the door: one lion or five hundred mice?

The spending of our tax dollars by the Pentagon represents the greatest social disease of our country; I call it Pentagonorrhea.

Nail polish or false eyelashes isn't politics. If you have good politics, what you wear is irrelevant. I don't take dictation from the pig-o-cratic style setters who say I should dress like a middle-aged lady. My politics don't depend on whether my tits are in or out of a bra.

Now, see there. Just because I'm wearing my Super-Dike sweatshirt, you think I'm a lesbian. I guess if I were wearing a string of pearls, you'd think I was an oyster.

I think unity is a mistake.... If I were the Establishment and had the big loaded guns of the various oppressive institutions....I would much prefer to see one lion come through the door than 500 mice.

There's a difference between Vaselining the rapee and catching the rapist.

Don't agonise, organise.

It's interesting to speculate how it developed that in two of the most anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are wearing the dresses.

... tobacco kills 52,000 people a year from lung cancer, and there's no telling how many lives have been ruined through drinking.But to my knowledge, no one has ever died of a blow job.

Here I am a woman attorney being told I can't practice law in slacks by a judge dressed in drag.

Women are dirt searchers; their greatest worth is irradicating rings on collars and tables. Never mind real-estate boards' corruption and racism, here's your soapsuds. Everything she is doing is peripheral, expendable, crucial, and non-negotiable. Cleanliness is next to godliness.

Countermovements among racists and sexists and nazifiers are just as relentless as dirt on a coffee table. . . . Every housewife knows that if you don't sooner or later dust . . . the whole place will be dirty again.

There's no way that I know of to avoid pain absolutely, but suffering is the interpretation we choose to place on the pain we encounter.

Freedom is like taking a bath: You got to keep doing it every day.

Any woman who still thinks marriage is a fifty-fifty proposition is only proving that she doesn't understand either men or percentages.

... anybody with the brains and energy to become a teacher ought to want to become something better.