Germaine Greer (born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the radical feminist movement in the later half of the 20th century.
Specializing in English and women’s literature, she has held academic positions in England at the University of Warwick and Newnham College, Cambridge, and in the United States at the University of Tulsa. Based in the United Kingdom since 1964, she has divided her time since the 1990s between Queensland, Australia and her home in Essex, England.
Greer’s ideas have created controversy ever since her first book, The Female Eunuch (1970), made her a household name. An international bestseller and a watershed text in the feminist movement, the book offered a systematic deconstruction of ideas such as womanhood and femininity, arguing that women are forced to assume submissive roles in society to fulfil male fantasies of what being a woman entails. Read More
Germaine Greer on Wife, Husband, Security
The house wife is an unpaid employee in her husband’s house in return for the security of being a permanent employee.
Germaine Greer on Personality, Result
What we ought to see in the agonies of puberty is the result of the conditioning that maims the female personality in creating the feminine.
Germaine Greer on Women, Fact
Women are reputed never to be disgusted. The sad fact is that they often are, but not with men; following the lead of men, they are most often disgusted with themselves.
Germaine Greer on Men, Women, Idea, Hate
Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.
Germaine Greer on Will, Woman
Yet if a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how far she could walk or how fast she could run?
Germaine Greer on Children, Population
We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children.
Germaine Greer on Man, Tragedy
The tragedy of machismo is that a man is never quite man enough.
Germaine Greer on Men, Women, Rank, Sight, Talking
The sight of women talking together has always made men uneasy; nowadays it means rank subversion.
Germaine Greer on War, Sex, Sex war, Theatre
The real theater of the sex war is the domestic hearth.
Germaine Greer on Management, Adulthood
The management of fertility is one of the most important functions of adulthood.
Germaine Greer on Love, Mother, Song
The compelled mother loves her child as the caged bird sings. The song does not justify the cage nor the love the enforcement.
Germaine Greer on Life, Denial, Nothing, Security
Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life.
Germaine Greer on Women, Revolution, Joy, Struggle
The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.
Germaine Greer on Love, Brotherhood, Man, World
The principle of the brotherhood of man is narcissistic… for the grounds for that love have always been the assumption that we ought to realize that we are the same the whole world over.
Germaine Greer on Women, Fight
I didn’t fight to get women out from behind vacuum cleaners to get them onto the board of Hoover.
Germaine Greer on Women, Being, Idealism, Reality
Perhaps women have always been in closer contact with reality than men: it would seem to be the just recompense for being deprived of idealism.
Germaine Greer on Survival, Energy, Environment, Trying
Perhaps catastrophe is the natural human environment, and even though we spend a good deal of energy trying to get away from it, we are programmed for survival amid catastrophe.
Germaine Greer on Control, Will
Only one thing is certain: if pot is legalized, it won’t be for our benefit but for the authorities. To have it legalized will also be to lose control of it.
Germaine Greer on Dawn, May, Night
One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.
Germaine Greer on War, Advice, Children, Present
Never advise anyone to go to war or to get married. Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present. He that has no children brings them up well.
Germaine Greer on Man, Woman
Man is jealous because of his amour propre; woman is jealous because of her lack of it.
Germaine Greer on Security
There is no such thing as security. There never has been.
Germaine Greer on Loneliness
Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate.
Germaine Greer on Love, Men, Egotism
If a person loves only one other person, and is indifferent to his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.
Germaine Greer on Man, Prison, Security
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
Germaine Greer on Love, Men, Women, Sex, Thought, Woman
I have always been principally interested in men for sex. I’ve always thought any sane woman would be a lover of women because loving men is such a mess. I have always wished I’d fall in love with a woman. Damn.
Germaine Greer on Right
Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves; when that right is pre-empted it is called brain-washing.
Germaine Greer on Mother, Father, Psychoanalysis
Freud is the father of psychoanalysis. It has no mother.
Germaine Greer on Confession, Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is the confession without absolution.
Germaine Greer on Sacrifice, Freedom, Measure
Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.
Germaine Greer on Evolution
Evolution is what it is. The upper classes have always died out; it’s one of the most charming things about them.
Germaine Greer on Brother
Even crushed against his brother in the Tube the average Englishman pretends desperately that he is alone.
Germaine Greer on Men, Care, Culture, English, Sense
English culture is basically homosexual in the sense that the men only really care about other men.
Germaine Greer on Soul, Instinct, May, Pain, Spirit, Spiritual
Developing the muscles of the soul demands no competitive spirit, no killer instinct, although it may erect pain barriers that the spiritual athlete must crash through.
Germaine Greer on Home, News, Newspapers, Rest, World
Australia is a huge rest home, where no unwelcome news is ever wafted on to the pages of the worst newspapers in the world.
Germaine Greer on Death, Society, Women, Man, Will
All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man; no society will survive a shortage of women.
