When someone works for less pay than she can live on - when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently - then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life.

The nation was not founded by habitual groupthinkers. But it stands a fair chance of being destroyed by them.

Considering the absence of legal coercion, the surprising thing is that men have for so long, and, on the whole, so reliably, adhered to what we might call the breadwinner ethic.

It is the marketplace that calls most clearly for men to be softer, more narcissistic and receptive, and the new man is the result.

The secret of the truly successful ... is that they learned early in life how not to be busy.

The fact is that heterosexual sex for most people is in no way free of the power relations between men and women.

By the Reagan era, the 'culture of poverty' had become a cornerstone of conservative ideology: poverty was caused not by low wages or a lack of jobs but by bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles. The poor were dissolute, promiscuous, prone to addiction and crime, unable to 'defer gratification' or possibly even set an alarm clock. The last thing they could be trusted with was money.