Amanda Montell > Quotes

“That’s because language doesn’t work to manipulate people into believing things they don’t want to believe; instead, it gives them license to believe ideas they’re already open to. Language—both literal and figurative, well-intentioned and ill-intentioned, politically correct and politically incorrect—reshapes a person’s reality only if they are in an ideological place where that reshaping is welcome.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish

“It’s not that smart people aren’t capable of believing in cultish things; instead, says Shermer, it’s that smart people are better at “defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish

“words are the medium through which belief systems are manufactured, nurtured, and reinforced, their fanaticism fundamentally could not exist without them.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish

“One of our culture’s least helpful pieces of advice is that women need to change the way they speak to sound less “like women” (or that queer people need to sound straighter, or that people of color need to sound whiter). The way any of these folks talk isn’t inherently more or less worthy of respect. It only sounds that way because it reflects an underlying assumption about who holds more power in our culture.”
― Amanda Montell, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

“There’s a reason most religions encourage prayer: Language strengthens beliefs.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish

“One of the sneakiest ways these biases show up is that in our language, in our culture, maleness is seen as the default”
― Amanda Montell, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

“The biggest joke in religious studies is that cult + time = religion.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish

“If you want to insult a woman, call her a prostitute. If you want to insult a man, call him a woman”
― Amanda Montell, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

“Roses are red Money is green The American Dream Is a pyramid scheme”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish

“We're also living in a time when we find respected media outlets and public figures circulating criticism of women's voices--like that they speak with too much vocal fry, overuse the words like and literally, and apologize in excess. They brand judgments like these as pseudofeminist advice aimed at helping women talk with 'more authority' so they can be 'taken more seriously.' What they don't seem to realize is that they're actually keeping women in a constant state of self-questioning--keeping them quiet--for no objectively logical reason other than that they don't sound like middle-aged white men.”
― Amanda Montell, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

“Creating special language to influence people’s behavior and beliefs is so effective in part simply because speech is the first thing we’re willing to change about ourselves . . . and also the last thing we let go.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish

“One of the burdens of being a woman is the imperative to be nice.”
― Amanda Montell, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

“Modern cultish groups also feel comforting in part because they help alleviate the anxious mayhem of living in a world that presents almost too many possibilities for who to be (or at least the illusion of such). I once had a therapist tell me that flexibility without structure isn’t flexibility at all; it’s just chaos. That’s how a lot of people’s lives have been feeling. For most of America’s history, there were comparatively few directions a person’s career, hobbies, place of residence, romantic relationships, diet, aesthetic—everything—could easily go in. But the twenty-first century presents folks (those of some privilege, that is) with a Cheesecake Factory–size menu of decisions to make. The sheer quantity can be paralyzing, especially in an era of radical self-creation, when there’s such pressure to craft a strong “personal brand” at the very same time that morale and basic survival feel more precarious for young people than they have in a long time. As our generational lore goes, millennials’ parents told them they could grow up to be whatever they wanted, but then that cereal aisle of endless “what ifs” and “could bes” turned out to be so crushing, all they wanted was a guru to tell them which to pick.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish

“A linguistic concept called the theory of performativity says that language does not simply describe or reflect who we are, it creates who we are.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish

“I think the golden rule for men should be: If you’re a man, don’t say anything to a woman on the street that you wouldn’t want a man saying to you in prison.”
― Amanda Montell, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

“Much religious language 'performs' rather than 'informs'.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

“Totalitarian leaders can’t hope to gain or maintain power without using language to till a psychological schism between their followers and everyone else.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish

“*​As the legendary Betty White once said, “Why do people say ‘grow some balls?’ Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.”
― Amanda Montell, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

“Simply put, slurs go out of style at the same time the underlying belief in them does.”
― Amanda Montell, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

“That means questioning the words we speak every day, as well as the contexts in which we use them—because without realizing it, something as simple as an address term or curse word might be reinforcing a power structure that we ultimately don’t agree with.”
― Amanda Montell, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

“This makes sense, because in every corner of life, business and otherwise, when you can tell deep down that something is ethically wrong but are having trouble pinpointing why, language is a good place to look for evidence.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish

“Contentious debates aside, thought-terminating clichés also pervade our everyday conversations: Expressions like “It is what it is,” “Boys will be boys,” “Everything happens for a reason,” “It’s all God’s plan,” and certainly “Don’t think about it too hard” are all common examples.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish

“flexibility without structure isn’t flexibility at all; it’s just chaos.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish

“Some compelling proof that women are indeed not born any more capable of empathy or connection than men comes from psychologist Niobe Way. In 2013 Way published a book called Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection, which explores the friendships of young straight men. Way followed a group of boys from childhood through adolescence and found that when they were little, boys’ friendships with other boys were just as intimate and emotional as friendships between girls; it wasn’t until the norms of masculinity sank in that the boys ceased to confide in or express vulnerable feelings for one another. By the age of eighteen, society’s “no homo” creed had become so entrenched that they felt like the only people they could look to for emotional support were women, further perpetuating the notion that women are obligated by design to carry humanity’s emotional cargo.”
― Amanda Montell, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

“one of them has to do with a type of conditioning most of us have experienced: the conditioning to automatically trust the voices of middle-aged white men.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish

“With words, we breathe reality into being.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

“What’s new is that in this internet-ruled age, when a guru can be godless, when the barrier to entry is as low as a double-tap, and when folks who hold alternative beliefs are able to find one another more easily than ever, it only makes sense that secular cults—from obsessed workout studios to start-ups that put the “cult” in “company culture”—would start sprouting like dandelions. For good or for ill, there is now a cult for everyone.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish

“Unlike the cults of the ‘70s, we don’t even have to leave the house for a charismatic figure to take hold of us. With contemporary cults, the barrier to entry if the simple frisson of tapping Follow.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

“Language change is always reflective of social change, and over the decades, as our sources, of connections and existential purpose has shifted due to the phenomena like social media, increased globalization, and withdrawal from traditional religion we've seen the rise of more alternative subgroups-some dangerous, some not so much. "Cult" has evolved to describe them all.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

“I think what I really want is to treat life less like a war. Wouldn't we have less Imposter Syndrome and fewer actual imposters if we just lowered our standards a bit? Modern productivity dogma encourages us to act fast, and milk our exceptionalism for all it's worth. Under that kind of pressure, perhaps the truest rebellion is to embrace our ordinariness. In everyday life, if we could not only tolerate the discomfort, but wholeheartedly embrace our own lack of expertise, then we might have a far better chance of showing others the same grace. Then perhaps life might feel, at the very least, less agitating, at most, we might even find peace. How’s this? Let’s stoop below average at 50% of all we do. We’ll relish it, the commonness. Next time we have a question, let’s hold our for as long as we humanly can before googling the answer. It’ll be erotic, like edging before a climax. It’s quite nice, I am learning, just to wonder indefinitely. To never have certain answers. To sit down, be humble, and not even dare to know”
― Amanda Montell, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality