Once women begin to question the inevitability of their subordination and to reject the conventions formerly associated with it, they can no longer retreat to the safety of those conventions. The woman who rejects the stereotype of feminine weakness and dependence can no longer find much comfort in the clich? that all men are beasts. She has no choice except to believe, on the contrary, that men are human beings, and she finds it hard to forgive them when they act like animals.

The intellectual debility of contemporary conservatism is indicated by its silence on all important matters.

Propaganda in the ordinary sense of the term plays a less important part in a consumer society, where people greet all official pronouncements with suspicion.

The model of ownership, in a society organized round mass consumption, is addiction.

It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times -- the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie -- seem attractive by comparison.

In our society, daily experience teaches the individual to want and need a never-ending supply of new toys and drugs.

The question of the family now divides our society so deeply that the opposing sides cannot even agree on a definition of the institution they are arguing about.