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.

Beauty is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects,

Beauty is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects, giving them limit, symmetry, proportion. Beauty halts and freezes the melting flux of nature.

Camille Anna Paglia

All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voic

All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!

Camille Anna Paglia

Minerva save us from the cloying syrup of coercive compassio

Minerva save us from the cloying syrup of coercive compassion!

Camille Anna Paglia

American universities are organized on the principle of the

American universities are organized on the principle of the nuclear rather than the extended family. Graduate students are grimly trained to be technicians rather than connoisseurs. The old German style of universal scholarship has gone.

Camille Anna Paglia

The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on i

The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification.

Camille Anna Paglia

Our major universities are now stuck with an army of pedestr

Our major universities are now stuck with an army of pedestrian, toadying careerists, Fifties types who wave around Sixties banners to conceal their record of ruthless, beaver-like tunneling to the top.

Camille Anna Paglia

Cinema is the culmination of the obsessive, mechanistic male

Cinema is the culmination of the obsessive, mechanistic male drive in western culture. The movie projector is an Apollonian straight-shooter, demonstrating the link between aggression and art. Every pictorial framing is a ritual limitation, a barred precinct.

Camille Anna Paglia

Film / Filmmaking / Movies

Woman is the dominant sex. Men have to do all sorts of stuff

Woman is the dominant sex. Men have to do all sorts of stuff to prove that they are worthy of woman's attention.

Camille Anna Paglia

If civilization had been left in female hands we would still

If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.

Camille Anna Paglia

Teenage boys, goaded by their surging hormones run in packs

Teenage boys, goaded by their surging hormones run in packs like the primal horde. They have only a brief season of exhilarating liberty between control by their mothers and control by their wives.

Camille Anna Paglia

The 1990s, after the reign of terror of academic vandalism,

The 1990s, after the reign of terror of academic vandalism, will be a decade of restoration: restoration of meaning, value, beauty, pleasure, and emotion to art and restoration of art to its audience.

Camille Anna Paglia

Twentieth Century

We should teach general ethics to both men and women, but se

We should teach general ethics to both men and women, but sexual relationships themselves must not be policed. Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in totalitarian regimes.

Camille Anna Paglia

My generation of the Sixties, with all our great ideals, des

My generation of the Sixties, with all our great ideals, destroyed liberalism, because of our excesses.

Camille Anna Paglia

Twentieth Century

Capitalism is an art form, an Apollonian fabrication to riva

Capitalism is an art form, an Apollonian fabrication to rival nature. It is hypocritical for feminists and intellectuals to enjoy the pleasures and conveniences of capitalism while sneering at it. Everyone born into capitalism has incurred a debt to it. Give Caesar his due.

Camille Anna Paglia

Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest. They are both amo

Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest. They are both amoral and immoral, consciously breaking rules. Their evil look at such times is no human projection: the cat may be the only animal who savors the perverse or reflects upon it.

Camille Anna Paglia

Out with stereotypes, feminism proclaims. But stereotypes ar

Out with stereotypes, feminism proclaims. But stereotypes are the west's stunning sexual personae, the vehicles of art's assault against nature. The moment there is imagination, there is myth.

Camille Anna Paglia

You have to accept the fact that part of the sizzle of sex c

You have to accept the fact that part of the sizzle of sex comes from the danger of sex. You can be overpowered.

Camille Anna Paglia

Pregnancy demonstrates the deterministic character of woman'

Pregnancy demonstrates the deterministic character of woman's sexuality. Every pregnant woman has body and self taken over by a chthonian force beyond her control. In the welcome pregnancy, this is a happy sacrifice. But in the unwanted one, initiated by rape or misadventure, it is a horror. Such unfortunate women look directly into nature's heart of Darkness. For a fetus is a benign tumor, a vampire who steals in order to live. The so-called miracle of birth is nature getting her own way.

Camille Anna Paglia

Elizabeth Taylor is pre-feminist woman. This is the source o

Elizabeth Taylor is pre-feminist woman. This is the source of her continuing greatness and relevance. She wields the sexual power that feminism cannot explain and has tried to destroy. Through stars like Taylor, we sense the world-disordering impact of legendary women like Delilah, Salome, and Helen of Troy. Feminism has tried to dismiss the femme fatale as a misogynist libel, a hoary clich?. But the femme fatale expresses women's ancient and eternal control of the sexual realm. The specter of the femme fatale stalks all men's relations with women.

Camille Anna Paglia

There are no accidents, only nature throwing her weight arou

There are no accidents, only nature throwing her weight around. Even the bomb merely releases energy that nature has put there. Nuclear war would be just a spark in the grandeur of space. Nor can radiation alter nature: she will absorb it all. After the bomb, nature will pick up the cards we have spilled, shuffle them, and begin her game again.

Camille Anna Paglia