Dora Russell Quotes

We have heeded no wisdom offering guidance.

Marie Stopes had established the first birth control clinic in Britain; the whole question of informing women, especially those who were poor, about methods of contraception, began to be discussed.

Comfort is bought at too high a price.

We have never yet had a labor Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens.

Industrial societies can only be run successfully by dictators or oligarchs.

There is no instinct that has been so maligned, suppressed, abused, and distorted by religious teaching as the instinct of sex.

We want far better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent them.

Measures of self-government and a school council, especially for such young children, were a great innovation.

If an adult uses violence on a child, the child will naturally assume that he too, has the right to use it on one smaller or weaker.

What a denial of our humanity that at the centers of power, where decisions are made, there is no room for nurturing, for love, and children. There is more to life than the ‘inhuman’ work place. It is terrible that many men do not know that: it is a tragedy if women follow them.

One of the problems with industrialism is that it’s based on the premise of more and more. It has to keep expanding to keep going. More and more television sets. More and more cars. More and more steel, and more and more pollution. We don’t question whether we need any more or what we’ll do with them. We just have to keep on making more and more if we are to keep going. Sooner or later it’s going to collapse. … Look what we have done already with the principle of more and more when it comes to nuclear weapons.

Feminists have emphasized for a long time the importance of each woman’s individual entity and the necessity of economic independence. Perhaps it was necessary. But now I think we need some emphasis on the instinctive side of life, sex and motherhood…. Life isn’t all earning your living. Unfortunately we fall in love and Feminism must take that into consideration.