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We spoke of ourselves as “emancipated” when we got the vote. Yet we are still slaves to the superficial and the superfluous. We are concerned with the length of our skirts, with the latest lipstick, with the newest thrill in hats. We are impressed by advertisements that insist we must be alluring; we must adopt a time-consuming coiffure, we must spend hours with the “beautician,” we must attend fashion shows. As long as women are preoccupied with nonessentials we shall be afflicted with infantilism, passivity, and the eventual disillusionment that results from trivial, unproductive lives.
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)

The two most far-reaching critical theories at the beginning of the latest phase of industrial society were those of Marx and Freud. Marx showed the moving powers and the conflicts in the social-historical process. Freud aimed at the critical uncovering of the inner conflicts. Both worked for the liberation of man, even though Marx’s concept was more comprehensive and less time-bound than Freud’s.
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)

From an old ruined fort on Staten Island, I have loved to watch all day some vessel whose name I had read in the morning through the telegraph glass, when she first came upon the coast, and her hull heaved up and glistened in the sun, from the moment when the pilot and most adventurous news-boats met her, past the Hook, and up the narrow channel of the wide bay, till she was boarded by the health officer, and took her station at quarantine, or held on her unquestioned course to the wharves of New York. It was interesting, too, to watch the less adventurous newsman, who made his assault as the vessel swept through the Narrows, defying plague and quarantine law, and, fastening his little cockboat to her huge side, clambered up and disappeared in the cabin. And then I could imagine what momentous news was being imparted by the captain, which no American ear had ever heard, that Asia, Africa, Europe—were all sunk; for which at length he pays the price, and is seen descending the ship’s side with his bundle of newspapers,... to dispose of his wares to the highest bidder, and we shall ere long read something startling,—”By the latest arrival,”M”by the good ship—M.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)