Camille Anna Paglia Quotes

A collection of quotes by Camille Anna Paglia.

Camille Anna Paglia is an American cultural critic, scholar, and author. She was born on April 2, 1947, in Endicott, New York. Paglia gained recognition for her controversial writings and provocative analysis on various topics including art, literature, sexuality, and feminism.

She holds a Ph.D. in English literature from Yale University and has taught at several institutions, including the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she is currently a professor of humanities and media studies. Paglia's work emphasizes the importance of individuality, free expression, and embracing the complexities of human nature.

Paglia gained widespread attention for her debut book, "Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson" (1990). In this expansive and ambitious work, she explored the connections between art, culture, and sexuality throughout history, challenging existing academic paradigms.

Throughout her career, Paglia has been known for her controversial views on feminism, often critiquing what she perceives as a narrow and victimized view of womanhood. She fiercely defends the autonomy and power of women while promoting an understanding that embraces both sexes and rejects rigid constructs.

Paglia's writings have appeared in notable publications, and she has authored several books, including "Sex, Art, and American Culture" (1992) and "Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism" (2017), among others. Her work continues to spark debate and challenge conventional wisdom in the fields of gender studies and cultural criticism.

Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art a

Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye. We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom.

Camille Anna Paglia

Society

Pornography is human imagination in tense theatrical action;

Pornography is human imagination in tense theatrical action; its violations are a protest against the violations of our freedom by nature.

Camille Anna Paglia

Pornography

There is no true expertise in the humanities without knowing

There is no true expertise in the humanities without knowing all of the humanities. Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Over-concentration on any one point is a distortion.

Camille Anna Paglia

Art

Prostitution is not just a service industry, mopping up the

Prostitution is not just a service industry, mopping up the overflow of male demand, which always exceeds female supply. Prostitution testifies to the amoral power struggle of sex, which religion has never been able to stop. Prostitutes, pornographers, and their patrons are marauders in the forest of archaic night.

Camille Anna Paglia

Prostitution

Despite crime's omnipresence, things work in society, becaus

Despite crime's omnipresence, things work in society, because biology compels it. Order eventually restores itself, by psychic equilibrium.

Camille Anna Paglia

Order

Pursuit and seduction are the essence of sexuality. It's par

Pursuit and seduction are the essence of sexuality. It's part of the sizzle.

Camille Anna Paglia

Seduction

The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men

The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men but rather their conqueror, an outlaw who controls the sexual channel between nature and culture.

Camille Anna Paglia

Prostitution

A woman simply is, but a man must become. Masculinity is ris

A woman simply is, but a man must become. Masculinity is risky and elusive. It is achieved by a revolt from woman, and it is confirmed only by other men. Manhood coerced into sensitivity is no manhood at all.

Camille Anna Paglia

Men

If you live in rock and roll, as I do, you see the reality o

If you live in rock and roll, as I do, you see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being aroused by male lust. It attracts women. It doesn't repel them.

Camille Anna Paglia

Desires

It is capitalist America that produced the modern independen

It is capitalist America that produced the modern independent woman. Never in history have women had more freedom of choice in regard to dress, behavior, career, and sexual orientation.

Camille Anna Paglia

America

The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art

The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism. Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.

Camille Anna Paglia

Image

Jesus was a brilliant Jewish stand-up comedian, a phenomenal

Jesus was a brilliant Jewish stand-up comedian, a phenomenal improviser. His parables are great one-liners.

Camille Anna Paglia

Christianity

My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intru

My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm -- as in abortion, sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a representative democracy.

Camille Anna Paglia

Anarchy

When anything goes, it's women who lose.

When anything goes, it's women who lose.

Camille Anna Paglia

Liberalism

Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he

Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not, he just falls back into her and is swallowed up.

Camille Anna Paglia

Mother

Modern bodybuilding is ritual, religion, sport, art, and sci

Modern bodybuilding is ritual, religion, sport, art, and science, awash in Western chemistry and mathematics. Defying nature, it surpasses it.

Camille Anna Paglia

Exercise

We need a new kind of feminism, one that stresses personal r

We need a new kind of feminism, one that stresses personal responsibility and is open to art and sex in all their dark, unconsoling mysteries. The feminist of the fin de si?cle will be bawdy, streetwise, and on-the-spot confrontational, in the prankish Sixties way.

Camille Anna Paglia

Women

Education has become a prisoner of contemporaneity. It is th

Education has become a prisoner of contemporaneity. It is the past, not the dizzy present, that is the best door to the future.

Camille Anna Paglia

Education

In the theory of gender I began from zero. There is no mascu

In the theory of gender I began from zero. There is no masculine power or privilege I did not covet. But slowly, step by step, decade by decade, I was forced to acknowledge that even a woman of abnormal will cannot escape her hormonal identity.

Camille Anna Paglia

Men & Women

The trauma of the Sixties persuaded me that my generation's

The trauma of the Sixties persuaded me that my generation's egalitarianism was a sentimental error. I now see the hierarchical as both beautiful and necessary. Efficiency liberates; egalitarianism tangles, delays, blocks, deadens.

Camille Anna Paglia

Equality