Anne Manne > Quotes

“The whole idea of "leaners" and "lifters" is the central teaching of the right wing ideologue, Ayn Rand, who penned books like The Virtue of Selfishness. It’s a self-serving crock. Rand found out the hard way. After a lifetime proselytising on behalf of the "producers" and denouncing anyone needing government assistance as "parasites," when Rand became old and sick, she discovered that even a bestselling author could not afford health care in the neoliberal US. She availed herself of Medicare and ended her life on what she had despised – social security.
~ an edited extract from "The Life of I: the new culture of narcissism" ~Anne Manne~”
― Anne Manne

“If, in the History of Childhood, one finds developmental goals and qualities ascribed to children reflecting the deepest values of each age--for the Romans valor; for the Puritans purity, piety and obedience; for the Victorians innocence and vulnerability; and so on--it is distinctive to our age to see the enthusiasm for early independence...”
― Anne Manne

“Alice Miller maintains that the true opposite of depression is not gaiety or absence of pain but vitality. Kohut”
― Anne Manne, The Life of I: The New Culture of Narcissism

“Time is objectified in the academic vita, which grows longer with each article and book, and not with each vegetable garden, camping trip, political meeting or child... what is won for the garden is lost to the vita.”
― Anne Manne, Motherhood: How Should We Care For Our Children?

“So much socially useful, morally important work on behalf of communities and families is unpaid work. Voluntary work, elder care, unpaid household labour, being a mother--all these things are work--meaningful, purposeful activities contributing to the commonweal.”
― Anne Manne, Motherhood: How Should We Care For Our Children?

“It is in fact a delicate balance between recognising what has been, and often still is, women's distinctive contribution to community, to family life, and acknowledging its worth, resisting its devaluation, while not forever consigning women to being solely responsible for caring.”
― Anne Manne, Motherhood: How Should We Care For Our Children?

“To be truthful about the complex, ambivalent feelings about motherhood one must often contradict one statement with another, and leave them there, letting their proximity to each other do the work.”
― Anne Manne, Motherhood: How Should We Care For Our Children?

“...meanwhile real work in the old-fashioned sense of labour that engages the hands as well as eye, that tires the body and directly alters the physical world--tends to vanish from sight... the moral challenge is, put simply, to make work visible again: not only the scrubbing and vacuuming, but all the hoeing, stacking, hammering, drilling, bending and lifting that goes into creating and maintaining a livable habitat.”
― Anne Manne, Motherhood: How Should We Care For Our Children?