“We could only fear chaos if we imagined that it was unknown to us, but in fact we know it very well.”

— Germaine Greer , book The Female Eunuch

Introduction
The Female Eunuch (1970)
Context: The fear of freedom is strong in us. We call it chaos or anarchy, and the words are threatening. We live in a true chaos of contradicting authorities, an age of conformism without community, of proximity without communication. We could only fear chaos if we imagined that it was unknown to us, but in fact we know it very well. It is unlikely that the techniques of liberation spontaneously adopted by women will be in such fierce conflict as exists between warring self-interests and conflicting dogmas, for they will not seek to eliminate all systems but their own. However diverse they may be, they need not be utterly irreconcilable, because they will not be conquistatorial.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We could only fear chaos if we imagined that it was unknown to us, but in fact we know it very well." by Germaine Greer?

Germaine Greer photo

Germaine Greer 73

Australian feminist author 1939

Related quotes

“We know God well, we don't fear dying but we fear only standing in front of God. but as we are sure we are on the right way, there is no problem.”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt

Remarks by el-Sisi during a military conference (28 April 2013) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC93fn9s3-c.
2013

“As long as a thing is unknown, it belongs to us in a way that well-known things do not. For we have the opportunity to fill the empty, unknown spaces for ourselves, and in them there is room for imagination and for hope.”

Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer

“The fear of freedom is strong in us. We call it chaos or anarchy, and the words are threatening.”

Germaine Greer book The Female Eunuch

Introduction
The Female Eunuch (1970)
Context: The fear of freedom is strong in us. We call it chaos or anarchy, and the words are threatening. We live in a true chaos of contradicting authorities, an age of conformism without community, of proximity without communication. We could only fear chaos if we imagined that it was unknown to us, but in fact we know it very well. It is unlikely that the techniques of liberation spontaneously adopted by women will be in such fierce conflict as exists between warring self-interests and conflicting dogmas, for they will not seek to eliminate all systems but their own. However diverse they may be, they need not be utterly irreconcilable, because they will not be conquistatorial.

“Maybe in fact it was better to have Saddam in there. Maybe Saddam, as bad as he was-was not the worst we could get. Maybe chaos was the worst we could get. That's the truth.”

Tucker Carlson (1969) American political commentator

Real Time with Bill Maher, 1 October 2004

“The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

“Instead of fearing the unknown, we must conquer our fear.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

“We will talk only about machines with very simple internal structures, too simple in fact to be interesting from the point of view of mechanical or electrical engineering. Interest arises, rather, when we look at these machines or vehicles as if they were animals, in a natural environment. We will be tempted, then, to use psychological language in describing their behavior. And yet we know very well that there is nothing in these vehicles that we have not put there ourselves.”

Valentino Braitenberg (1926–2011) Italian-Austrian neuroscientist

p 2
Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology (1984)

“We live well in the houses—well enough. But we are ruled utterly by fear. There was a time we sailed in ships between the stars, and now we dare not go a hundred miles from home. We keep a little knowledge, and do nothing with it. But once we used that knowledge to weave the pattern of life like a tapestry across night and chaos. We enlarged the chances of life. We did man’s work.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, City of Illusions (1967), Chapter 1

“But the past cannot be changed, and we carry our choices with us, forward, into the unknown. We can only move on.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

“Remember that fear causes to happen the very things it fears. That's why fear should be unknown to us.”

Louis De Bernières (1954) English novelist

Related topics