Jessica Mitford Quotes

You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.

Gracious dying is a huge, macabre and expensive joke on the American public.

[On the United States:] A nation which does not appreciate that the simple elocution exercise 'Merry Mary married hairy Harry' contains not one but three vowel sounds.

Objectivity? I've always had an objective.

Picking other people's brains is an art worth cultivating.

Things on the whole are much faster in America; people don't 'stand for election', they 'run for office.'

Enemies are, to me, as important as friends in my life, and when they die I mourn their passing.

The character and mentality of the keepers may be of more importance in understanding prisons than the character and mentality of the kept.

I have nothing against undertakers personally. It's just that I wouldn't want one to bury my sister.

Growing up in the English countryside seemed an interminable process. Freezing winter gave way to frosty spring, which in turn merged into chilly summer-but nothing ever, ever happened.

Society created the prison in its own image; will history, with its penchant for paradox, reverse those roles?

Now there is a society where the funeral industry got completely out of control.

the prison system, inherently unjust and inhumane, is the ultimate expression of injustice and inhumanity in the society at large.

Knowing few children of my age with whom to compare notes, I envied the children of literature to whom interesting things were always happening.

lifelong enemies are, I think, as hard to make and as important to one's well-being as lifelong friends.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When "Somebody Up There" - a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator - so decrees.

Objectivity? I always have an objective.

It is somehow reassuring to discover that the word travel is derived from travail, denoting the pains of childbirth.

Prison walls are meant not only to keep convicts in, but to keep the would-be investigator out.

It is somehow reassuring to discover that the word "travel" is derived from "travail " denoting the pains of childbirth.