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Portrait of Camille Paglia

Camille Paglia

(1947) Literary Critic

427 quotes in 2584 categories

Paglia’s pen never shies away from the clash of art, politics, and desire. This collection gathers each of her incisive observations, offering a panoramic look at how she interrogates the forces that shape society.

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Camille Paglia is a literary critic, best known for Sexual Personae.

Quick Facts About Camille Paglia

Born: April 2, 1947
Profession: Literary Critic
Notable works: Sexual Personae

About Camille Paglia

Camille Anna Paglia is an American academic, social critic and feminist. Paglia was a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1984 until the university's closure in 2024. She is critical of many aspects of modern culture and is the author of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990) and other books. She is also a critic of contemporary American feminism and of post-structuralism, as well as a commentator on multiple aspects of American culture such as its visual art, music, and film history.

Biography source: Wikipedia

Quotes by Camille Paglia

Capitalism is an art form.

Art

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The Dionysian is no picnic.

Picnic

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The Devil is a woman.

Devil

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“Sex is power.”

Power

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A woman simply is, but a man must become.

Become

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Criticism at its best is re-creative, not spirit-killing.

Creative

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I guess I'm just a natural warrior.

Guess

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Modernization means Westernization.

Mean

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I am a very reclusive, private person.

Am

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Though men may be deep, mentally they are slow.

May

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Men chase by night those they will not greet by day.

Chase

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[On Hollywood:] America's greatest achievement.

Achievement

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Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist.

Dog

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Academic Marxists, with their elitist sense of superiority to popular taste, are the biggest snobs in America.

Academic

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Tranvestism is far more common among men, I noted, because it originates in the primary relation of mother and son.

Common

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Far from poisoning the mind, pornography shows the deepest truth about sexuality, stripped of romantic veneer.

Mind

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Television is actually closer to reality than anything in books. The madness of TV is the madness of human life.

Books

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The damage done to U.S. prestige by the feckless, buffoonish George W. Bush will take years to repair.

Damage

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Pregnancy demonstrates the deterministic character of woman's sexuality.

Character

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Primary-school education is a crock, basically. It's oppressive to anyone with physical energy, especially guys.

Anyone

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'Mad Men' doesn't capture one single thing about the decor, costumes, or sexual interaction. It is a total projection of contemporary snarky…

About

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Male urination really is a kind of accomplishment, an arc of transcendance. A woman merely waters the ground she stands on.

Accomplishment

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Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing…

Complacent

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The thrill of terror is passive, masochistic, and implicitly feminine. It is imaginative submission to overwhelming superior force.

Adventure

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I love the Web, but the basis of my work is going through the physical books. When you go to the library,…

Around

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Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest. They are both amoral and immoral, consciously breaking rules. Their ''evil'' look at such times is…

Animal

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I certainly derived my skills as a prose writer from my scrutiny of poetry and of the individual word. But schools don't…

Individual

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Men knew that if they devirginized a woman, they could end up dead within twenty-four hours. These controls have been removed.

Ends

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“Moralism and ignorance are responsible for the constant stereotyping of prostitutes by their lowest common denominator -- the sick, strung-out addicts, couched…

Common denominator

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The North American intellectual tradition began, I maintain, in the encounter of British Romanticism with assertive, pragmatic North American English - the…

American

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Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme…

Age

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Women are being told "you are future leaders." Meanwhile, we are more than our jobs. One reason Sex and the City was…

Children

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And what do Democrats stand for, if they are so ready to defame concerned citizens as the 'mob' - a word betraying…

1960s

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“Reunion with the mother is a siren call haunting our imagination. Once there was bliss, and now there is struggle. Dim memories…

Fantasy

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Capitalism, gaudy and greedy, has been inherent in western aesthetics from ancient Egypt on. It is the mysticism and glamour of things…

Aesthetics

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In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention,…

Apollo

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Science cannot avert a single thunderbolt.

Accounts

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before feminism was, Paglia was!

Feminism

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Effeminate men have suffered a bad press the world over.

Bad press

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Heaven help the American-born boy with a talent for ballet.

Ballet

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Camille Paglia by topic

Feminism (70) Men (61) Art (45) Nature (38) Sex (35) World (31) Males (31) Feminist (30) Education (25) Artist (24) Politics (23) History (23) Female (23) Thinking (21) Women (20) Culture (19) Years (18) Time (17) Parenting (16) Body (16) Western (15) Political (15) Love (15) Should (14) Sexuality (14)