Joycelyn Elders Quotes

A bully is playing a game, one that he or she enjoys and needs. You're welcome to play this game if it makes you happy, but for most people, it will make you miserable.

Boys like it when you're mean. That's what I'm best at. I make them feel so bad about themselves, all out of fun.

The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.

I went to Washington several times at the request of different parties to talk about education reform. I used to always say I felt like I needed to take a shower after I left, because it was so partisan that I just really hated it.

I personally always find something really scary about watching little girls learning to manipulate their dads by baby talking. Then they grow up and use the same technique on their boyfriends or husbands. That scares me because it's just so sick on so many levels.

I was the kind of person who got bullied and loved the attention of it.

I think there's as much violence, in a way, as a scene with two women having a cup of coffee in a Ruth Rendell novel - in terms of emotional violence and the violence you can inflict with language - as there is in the most graphic kind of serial killer/slasher novel you can think of.

There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery's version of the Barack Obama 'Hope' poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists. Depressing because Mr. Obama's Washington was not supposed to be the lobbyists' Washington, the place we learned to despise during the last administration.

If you don't do it my way, I suggest you commit suicide.

I grew up in a family that was very barbed and difficult, and there was a lot of humor. None of it was painless humor. All of it was at someone else's expense. It was kind of always about power.

People just get kicks out of making other people sad.

Whenever anyone complains about the confirmation process, it means their guy is getting roughed up.

Washington believes in Zero-Sum politics.

I've met my share of guys who have insulted and assaulted my intelligence with their stories and games. I say hello and goodbye!

'Mean' is a song I wrote about somebody who wrote things that were so mean so many times that it would ruin my day. Then it would ruin the next day. And it would level me so many times, I just felt like I was being hit in the face every time this person would take to their computer.

In psychology, trying to force others to accept the reality of a fake world is called gaslighting. It got its name from the 1944 film 'Gaslight,' in which a husband convinces his wife and their neighbors that she is insane.

The only way to stop gaslighting is to shine the light of reality onto a situation. That makes it imperative for the perpetrator to keep victims in the dark.

Never underestimate the value of someone who can say, 'You make me sick.'

Raining Gold' is about feeling trapped in a broken dynamic. Feeling so worn out and turned upside down from manipulation can make you feel like you're in a daze.

Even when I was growing up and playing with friends I used to get kicked.

When I was younger, I used to think it was kind of cool to abuse actors mentally, but I really disagree with that now.

... motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.

They let you dream just to watch them shatter, you're just a step on the boss man's ladder.

A weapon men use against women is the refusal to take them seriously.

Self-hatred leads to the need either to dominate or to be dominated.