About Kate Millett

Katherine Murray Millettwas an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She attended the University of Oxford and was the first American woman to be awarded a degree with first-class honors after studying at St Hilda’s College, Oxford.

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More quotes from Kate Millett

They are more beautiful than anything in the world, kinetic sculptures, perfect form in motion.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

Isn’t privacy about keeping taboos in their place?

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

I was supposed to be women’s lib, and now I’d exceeded it and gone over into international politics.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

Because of our social circumstances, male and female are really two cultures and their life experiences are utterly different.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

In those days, when you got boxed, that was it. A lot of old people were there because somebody wanted the farm. It was about property. People are treated like property.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

Politics is repetition. It is not change. Change is something beyond what we call politics. Change is the essence politics is supposed to be the means to bring into being.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

We are women. We are a subject people who have inherited an alien culture.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

The concept of romantic love affords a means of emotional manipulation which the male is free to exploit, since love is the only circumstance in which the female is (ideologically) pardoned for sexual activity.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

The involuntary character of psychiatric treatment is at odds with the spirit and ethics of medicine itself.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

My sister said, You’re making it hard for all us housewives in Nebraska.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

This is how psychiatry has functioned-as a kind of property arm of the government, who can put you away if your husband doesn’t like you.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

I’m slammed with an identity that can no longer say a word; mute with responsibility.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

It was horrifying. You wouldn’t believe how people are treated there. You could see that these people had withdrawn so far that they just lived in their own minds. They did terrible things to themselves.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

We’re more sexually repressed than men, having been given a much more strict puritanical code of behavior than men ever have.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

Many women do not recognize themselves as discriminated against; no better proof could be found of the totality of their conditioning.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

We are naive and moralistic women. We are human beings who find politics a blight upon the human condition. And do not know how one copes with it except through politics.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

Psychiatry causes so much death.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

It would appear that love is dead. Or very likely in a bad way.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

What is the future of the woman’s movement? How in the hell do I know? I don’t run it.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

You won’t do any more housework? Then you go to the bin.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

With the first act of cruelty committed in the name of revolution, with the first murder, with the first purge and execution, we have lost the revolution.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

Aren’t women prudes if they don’t and prostitutes if they do?

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

Men and women were declared equal one morning and everybody could divorce each other by postcard.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

However muted its present appearance may be, sexual dominion obtains nevertheless as perhaps the most pervasive ideology of our culture and provides its most fundamental concept of power.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

As women, we’re probably more protective of children. Also, we’ve been minors all of our history.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

Everybody believes in psychiatry; it’s supposed to be for our own good. Let psychiatry prove that anybody has an illness, and I’d concede, but there is no physical proof.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

This country is becoming increasingly authoritarian. It’s based on capital punishment.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

What is the natural reaction when told you have a hopeless mental illness? That diagnosis does you in; that, and the humiliation of being there. I mean, the indignity you’re subjected to. My God.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

A sexual revolution begins with the emancipation of women, who are the chief victims of patriarchy, and also with the ending of homosexual oppression.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

They weren’t crazy. They were tired of being locked up. Even I could see that.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

The great mass of women throughout history have been confined to the cultural level of animal life in providing the male with sexual outlet and exercising the animal functions of reproduction and care of the young.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

What is our freedom fight about? Is it about the liberation of children or just having sex with them?

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

Mother had committed me for life. This is where I felt betrayed the most.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)

I saw hell. The hospital had divided and conquered pretty successfully.

Kate Millett

American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934-2017)