Naomi Wolf Quotes

Author Image

Naomi Wolf

Profession : Author

Birth : November 12, 1962

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints.

Naomi Wolf

If you look at weak democracies, the oligarchies that have taken undue control of them always seek to tamper with the vote. It is important for oligarchs to have elections to give their guy a veneer of legitimacy - and important for the vote always to turn out 'their way.'

Naomi Wolf

As a free-speech advocate, I believe that adults should have access to any material they want. As a parent, and a community member, I think people should be able to protect their homes from imagery - much of it violent - that is, I feel, a form of child abuse when adult society inflicts it upon children.

Naomi Wolf

The symbolic value of having an African-American president has certainly eased some racial tensions in America, but they're not gone.

Naomi Wolf

How is it even sustainable in 21st-century America that women earn, on average, 77 cents for every dollar earned by men?

Naomi Wolf

It is important to distinguish between the power of the Internet to make the great change it can, and the limits and vulnerabilities of that change without real-time political mobilization deployed globally to protect those who venture out, especially in closed societies, into the heady new vistas it offers.

Naomi Wolf

A utopian future for the Internet could be secured if the heavy-duty influencers - and the grassroots influencers tweeting along - can create a new global organization peopled with defenders of Internet freedom.

Naomi Wolf

French existentialism is an unhelpful philosophy in which to couch modern feminism: born from the ravages of the Second World War, it is a cynical, individualistic school of thought that posits the self and personal choice as the measure of life's entire meaning.

Naomi Wolf

From 1970 onwards, our culture told both sexes that individual expression was paramount. And for women, that was defined as the right to choose an interesting a career, a high-status mate, the desirable handbag or vacation, the perfect family size, and a definitionally fruitless quest for 'perfection.'

Naomi Wolf

Victorian feminists made the mistake of making membership of the sisterhood conditional on signing up to a particular policy agenda. Marxist feminists made a similar mistake of saying, 'You can't be a real feminist unless you join with miners, the unions, the vegans.'

Naomi Wolf

Since Madonna is positioned as always 'cooler than thou,' we all are primed for schadenfreude if something in her fabulous life goes amiss.

Naomi Wolf

For Gore 2000, I was a formal campaign adviser: contrary to RNC mythology, my brief was not 'wardrobe,' but rather policy on women's issues, and messaging. I was also married to a Clinton speechwriter, and observed the message decision-making process from the perspective of a spouse.

Naomi Wolf

Protesters should make their own media and not rely on mainstream media to cover them.

Naomi Wolf

In 70s America, protest used to be very effective, but in subsequent decades municipalities have sneakily created a web of 'overpermiticisation' - requirements that were designed to stifle freedom of assembly and the right to petition government for redress of grievances, both of which are part of our first amendment.

Naomi Wolf

Since Reagan there has been this tradition, which has become a cliche, of promising morning in America, this fake optimism, we're the best, the city on the hill. In fact the great American task is self-scrutiny.

Naomi Wolf

For all the power of video and film, I am not giving up my pen. I am just much more likely to try to link essays to webcasts or videos. The best way for these two media to move forward, to inform and make change, is in tandem; together they are more than the sum of their parts.

Naomi Wolf

Documentary film without nuanced journalistic sourcing risks being sensational, tendentious or broad-brushed.

Naomi Wolf

It is standard practice for corrupt leaders who are seeking a certain political outcome to hype or manipulate a terror threat or a threat of violent domestic subversion. While sometimes the threat is manufactured, frequently the hyped threat is based on a real danger.

Naomi Wolf

Let's dare to release our immature fantasies of a magically faultless U.S. system and a magically protected election process. We have been lucky as a nation, but sometimes continued luck depends on action.

Naomi Wolf

After we were hit on September 11, 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the U.S.A. Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it.

Naomi Wolf