A Quote by Joan Fontaine

Marriage, as an institution, is as dead as the dodo bird. — © Joan Fontaine
Marriage, as an institution, is as dead as the dodo bird.
To me, marriage is a dead thing. It is an institution, and you cannot live in an institution; only mad people live in institutions. It is a substitute for love. Love is dangerous: to be in love is to be in a storm, constantly. You need courage and you need awareness, and you are to be ready for anything. There is no security in love; love is insecure. Marriage is a security: the registry office, the police, the court are behind it. The state, the society, the religion - they are all behind it. Marriage is a social phenomenon. Love is individual, personal, intimate.
You have a humming dodo bird," I said stupidly.
Marriage is a plastic flower - marriage is an institution. And who wants to live in an institution?
It is statistically proven that the strongest institution that guarantees procreation and continuity of the generations is marriage between one man and one woman. We don't want genocide. We don't want to destroy the sacred institution of marriage.
Because marriage is a sacred institution and the foundation of society, it should not be redefined by activist judges. For the good of families, children and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage.
... fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there-because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie. The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don't think it should exist.
Marriage is a psychological condition, not a civil contract and a license. Once a marriage is dead, it is dead, and it begins to stink faster than a dead fish.
A middle ground might be to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society's moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution. [Legalizing "same-sex marriage"] is also a chance to wholly transform the definition of family in American culture.
I still think marriage is a goofy institution if you set it up as this institution with a predetermined set of rules. It's unhealthy to have a predisposed expectation of what you think a marriage should be - as this thing at the end of the rainbow. False expectations take away joy.
The likes of Frank Lampard and John Terry at Chelsea, English players with proper status at a club, they're going to be like the dodo bird. Extinct.
But people try love and because they are unconscious... their longing is good, but their love is full of jealousy, full of possessiveness, full of anger, full of nastiness. Soon they destroy it. Hence for centuries they have depended on marriage. Better to start by marriage so that the law can protect you from destroying it. The society, the government, the court, the policeman, the priest, they will all force you to live in the institution of marriage, and you will be just a slave. If marriage is an institution, you are going to be a slave in it. Only slaves want to live in institutions.
Nothing provides the antidote to narcissism, or the environment for the healthy raising of children, or the way for people to take care of one another, as does the marriage of a man and a woman. And while most divorces are terribly sad, divorce itself no more undermines the institution of marriage than car crashes undermine the institution of driving.
But ultimately, the purpose of marriage is to transmit civilization to the next generation. There has never been an institution that does it as well as marriage, and that is marriage between a man and a woman.
I'm not sure that it's right to view this as excluding a particular group. When the institution of marriage developed historically, people didn't get around and say, 'Let's have this institution, but let's keep out homosexuals.' The institution developed to serve purposes that, by their nature, didn't include homosexual couples.
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?
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