Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that security is an illusion, as even in a prison, one is only temporarily safe from external threats.
Germaine Greer's quote highlights the paradox of security and freedom. While a maximum security prison may offer a sense of safety from the outside world, this security is fundamentally compromised by the ever-present threat of release, demonstrating that true security comes not from confinement, but from autonomy and the choices we make in life. It questions the nature of security and freedom, ultimately suggesting that living in fear of losing one’s freedom can overshadow any sense of safety.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the nature of freedom and confinement.
It is often falsely assumed, even by feminists, that sexuality is the enemy of the female who really wants to develop these aspects of her personality, and this is perhaps the most misleading aspect of movements like the National Organization of Women. It was not the insistence upon her sex that weakened the American woman student's desire to make something of her education, but the insistence upon a passive sexual role
A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity.
The only perfect love to be found on earth is not sexual love, which is riddled with hostility and insecurity, but the wordless commitment of families, which takes as its model mother-love. This is not to say that fathers have no place, for father-love, with its driving for self-improvement and discipline, is also essential to survival, but that uncorrected father-love, father-love as it were practiced by both parents, is a way to annihilation.
Women live lives of continual apology. They are born and raised to take the blame for other people's behavior. If they are treated without respect, they tell themselves that they have failed to earn respect. If their husbands do not fancy them, it is because they are unattractive.
The wedding is the chief ceremony of the middle-class mythology, and it functions as the official entrée of the spouses to their middle-class status. This is the real meaning of saving up to get married. The young couple struggles to set up an image of comfortable life which they will be forced to live up to in the years that follow.
Guilt is one side of a nasty triangle; the other two are shame and stigma. This grim coalition combines to inculpate women themselves of the crimes committed against them.
What give all that is tragic, whatever its form, the characteristic of the sublime, is the first inkling of the knowledge that the world and life can give no satisfaction, and are not worth our investment in them. The tragic spirit consists in this. Accordingly it leads to resignation.
Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong
Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?" Marmeladov's question came suddenly into his mind "for every man must have somewhere to turn.
Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding.
The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
The unbeliever imagines that religion pretends to offer answers, while the believer knows that the only promise it makes is to multiply questions.
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