Gloria Steinem Quotes

You either are or you're not.

There are two sides to every question, exactly opposite to each other.

For too long, actually, we have either said you're this or that.

I've read quite a few readers' reviews of my book on Amazon, saying, 'Ah, he criticises the free market, he advocates central planning.' I don't do that for a minute! But this is our black and white, dichotomous way of thinking - which has really been harmful.

The world doesn't see a lot of gray. The world sees black and white, and then it understands.

Either you're a hater or a lover.

In movies we tend make things black and white: you're either this, or you're that.

What I really resent most about people sticking labels on you is that it cuts off all the other elements of what you are because it can only deal with black and white; the cartoon.

I am black or white, I'll never be grey in my life.

I like to think that Junie B. looks at the world - and this isn't a negative comment on her - from the lowest common denominator. It's not all gray to her; it's all black and white.

The Americans at heart are a pure and noble people; things to them are in black and white. It's either 'rawk' or it's not. We Brits putter around in the grey area.

I have a very extreme state of mind. Things are very black or very white.

Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites.

The problem, of course, was that [he] saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can't love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.

Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either/Ors, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities.

I'm a very binary person in a bad way where it's like everything is either totally great or totally awful.

Journalists often put things into either-or scenarios.

I began dividing life in absolutes... Things and people were either perfectly bad, or perfectly good, and when life didn't obey this black-and-white rule, when things or people were complex or contradictory, I pretended otherwise. I turned every defeat into a disaster, every success into an epic triumph, and separated all people into heroes or villains. Unable to bear ambiguity, I built a barricade of delusions against it.

Here's the problem: the description of the world is always reduced to yes or no, black or white. Superficial stories. Superhero stories. One side is the good one. The other one is evil.

You are either with us or against us…

The question really is what action we take which lessens the chances of a nuclear exchange, which obviously is the final failure…. You have:, A blockade without any declaration of war A blockade with a declaration of war Strikes One, Two and Three We’ve got invasion

The great problem now is that we don’t know what to do.

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.

We need not wade into the current of Niagara Falls unless we please; but, after we have waded in we must thereafter be governed by the course and force of the stream.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.