Marya Mannes Quotes

Money is not an aphrodisiac: the desire it may kindle in the female eye is more for the cash than the carrier.

Promiscuous ... was a word I had never applied to myself. Possibly no one ever does, for it is a sordid word, reducing many valuable moments to nothing more than doglike copulation.

You cannot know what you do not feel.

The greatest miracle of all, the human being.

Advertisers in general bear a large part of the responsibility for the deep feelings of inadequacy that drive women to psychiatrists, pills, or the bottle.

We pity or condemn the communist peoples of the world for being bound in the chains of doctrine. So are we. Our doctrine runs as follows: Our Way is the Only Way.

The barbarian weapon is fission: the splitting asunder. It has been perfected for death. Our only weapon is fusion: an imperfect process still, though designed for life.

I don't think it's possible to write a good play or paint a good picture and be a good Republican.

performance is an act of faith.

All wars derive from lack of empathy: the incapacity of one to understand and accept the likeness or difference of another. Whether in nations or the encounters of race and sex, competition then replaces compassion, subjection excludes mutuality.

It is television's primary damage that it provides ten million children with the same fantasy, ready-made and on a platter.

Revelation is the marriage of knowing and feeling.

A high standard of living is usually accompanied by a low standard of thinking.

It's never what you say, but how you make it sound sincere.

To be at peace with self, to find company and nourishment in self-this would be the test of the free and productive psyche.

No man is a Christian who cheats his fellows, perverts the truth, or speaks of a "clean bomb" yet he will be the first to make public his faith in God.

Republicans seems to me to be chiefly concerned with holding on to what they have: in society, it's position, or respectability, or what you will; in business, of course, it's profit.

You mix the affluence of the white and the poverty of the black and you do not get a civilized society. Integration on an equal level is one thing. Mixing on an unequal level is another.

The faucet leak, and learn to leave them so.

You cannot throw words like heroism and sacrifice and nobility and honor away without abandoning the qualities they express.

Self-restraint may be alien to the human temperament, but humanity without restraint will dig its own grave.

In an age where the lowered eyelid is just a sign of fatigue, the delicate game of love is pining away. Freud and flirtation are poor companions.

the incredible new medical technology has made it possible for highly disciplined teams of surgeons ... to keep stricken organisms alive even if the brain is irretrievably damaged or lung and heart incapable of functioning without mechanical help. Now it is not dust to dust, but human to vegetable.

Slowly the wasters and despoilers are impoverishing our land, our nature, and our beauty, so that there will not be one beach, one hill, one lane, one meadow, one forest free from the debris of man and the stigma of his improvidence.

It is a marvellous thing to be physically a woman if only to know the marvels of a man.

Everybody likes to see somebody else get caught for the vices practiced by themselves.

A musical audience is at best uninspiring, at worst definitely drab. ... Respectability hangs like a pall over the orchestra and the boxes; a sort of sterile sobriety ill-fitted to the passionate geometry of music.

What is asserted by a man is an opinion; what is asserted by a woman is opinionated. A woman with ideas and the ability to express them is something of a social embarrassment, like an unhousebroken pet.

People minus space equals Poverty ... What is living for? If the answer is a life of dignity, decency and opportunity, then every increase in population means a decrease in all three. The crowd is a threat to every single being.

The ultimate cynicism is to suspend judgment so that you are not judged.

The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained. By the age of fifty you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth.

All great lovers are articulate, and verbal seduction is the surest road to actual seduction.

People on horses look better than they are. People in cars look worse than they are.

The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control their emotions by the application of reason.

The Republicans think they have a corner on morality.

Hoary idea, in any case, expecting a woman to surrender her name to her husband's in exchange for his. Why? Would any man submerge his identity and heritage to the woman he wed?

Generosity with strings is not generosity: it is a deal.

The real demon is success-the anxieties engendered by this quest are relentless, degrading, corroding. What is worse, there is no end to this escalation of desire.

The right to choose death when life no longer holds meaning is not only the next liberation but the last human right.

I don't think the advertisers have any real idea of their power not only to reflect but to mould society.

Is there no end to this escalation of desire?

A man at his desk in a room with a closed door is a man at work. A woman at a desk in any room is available.

Euthanasia ... is simply to be able to die with dignity at a moment when life is devoid of it.

Art can excite, titillate, please, entertain, and sometimes shock; but its ultimate function is to ennoble.

To know the good is to react against the bad. Indifference is the mark of deprivation.

the car, by bisecting the human outline, diminishes it, producing a race of half-people in a motion not of their own making

For every five well-adjusted and smoothly functioning Americans, there are two who never had the chance to discover themselves. It may well be because they have never been alone with themselves.

It is not enough to show people how to live better; there is a mandate for any group with enormous powers of communication to show people how to be better.