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Society Quotes
"All we think about in the cycle of violence is men. If we miss the oestrogen factor we cannot solve the cycle of violence. We cannot bring peace to the world unless we hold women accountable and morally responsible, particularly for their attacks upon children."
32
"What guides Marxism, then, is a different model of society, and a different conception of the function of the knowledge that can be produced by society and acquired from it."
32
"Some changes we can control, but we find that many things are inseparably wired into the life we share in local, national, and global communities. For example, the healthy lifestyle you are determined to live and take to be a personal choice of which you have control, is heavily influenced and limited by the culture and industries of the communities you belong to."
32
"Intrusive, thoughtless people!" said K. as he turned back into the room. The supervisor may have agreed with him, at least K. thought that was what he saw from the corner of his eye. But it was just as possible that he had not even been listening as he had his hand pressed firmly down on the table and seemed to be comparing the length of his fingers."
32
"Propaganda is amazing. People can be led to believe anything."
32
"The most basic obligation we have to our veterans is that we keep the promises that were made to them. That is what makes the recent failures of the Veterans Administration so shameful."
32
"In the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That... was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about 'white men.'"
32
"The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back, by the efforts of others to push themselves forward."
32
"Cademics and intellectuals are culture vultures. In a gathering of today's elite, it is perfectly acceptable to laugh that you barely passed Physics for Poets and Rocks for Jocks and have remained ignorant of science ever since, despite the obvious importance of scientific literacy to informed choices about personal health and public policy. But saying that you have never heard of James Joyce or that you tried listening to Mozart once but prefer Andrew Lloyd Webber is as shocking as blowing your nose on your sleeve or announcing that you employ children in your sweatshop, despite the obvious unimportance of your tastes in leisure-time activity to just about anything."
32
"In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are not only living off our assets and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources; we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest."
32
"There is always a city. There is always a civilization. There is always a barbarian with a pickaxe. Sometimes you are the city, sometimes you are the civilization, but to become that city, that civilization, you once took a pickaxe and destroyed what you hated, and what you hated is what you did not understand."
32
"One day when we came to a stop, a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon. There was a stampede. Dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs. The worker watched the spectacle with great interest... Years later, I witnessed a similar spectacle in Aden. Out ship's passengers amused themselves by throwing coins to the 'natives,' who dove to retrieve them. An elegant Parisian lady took great pleasure in this game. When I noticed two children desperately fighting in the water, one trying to strangle the other, I implored the lady, 'Please don't throw any more coins!' 'Why not?' said she. 'I like to give charity..."
32
"Rock and Roll adolescent hoodlums storm the streets of all nations. They rush into the Louvre and throw acid in the Mona Lisa's face."
32
"Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society and state in which we live."
32
"A mixture, before the English, of irritation and bafflement, of having this same language, same past, so many same things, and yet not belonging to them any more. Being worse than rootless... speciesless."
32
"Fortune's fool! How we humans lie upon beauty like lizards upon a sun-baked rock."
32
"I think that it [the Church] stands for everything most hostile to the mental emancipation and stimulation of mankind. It is the completest, most highly organized system of prejudices and antagonisms in existence. Everywhere in the world there are ignorance and prejudice, but the greatest complex of these, with the most extensive prestige and the most intimate entanglement with traditional institutions, is the Roman Catholic Church. It presents many faces towards the world, but everywhere it is systematic in its fight against freedom."
32
"We still and always want waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show."
32
"The Ten Commandments have never been replaced as the moral basis upon which society rests."
32
"Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success."
32
"Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road."
32
"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
31
"There is only one thing more harmful to society than an elected official forgetting the promises he made in order to get elected; that's when he doesn't forget them."
31
"There are some circles in America where it seems to be more socially acceptable to carry a hand-gun than a packet of cigarettes."
31
"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words."
31
"Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society."
31
"The practice of patience toward one another, the overlooking of one another's defects, and the bearing of one another's burdens is the most elementary condition of all human and social activity in the family, in the professions, and in society."
31
"Affirmative action has a negative effect on our society when it means counting us like so many beans and dividing us into separate piles."
31
"I have the satisfaction of knowing I did something useful for society."
31
"Judge Roberts has assured me personally that he has a healthy respect for precedent and the hard-won rights of Americans."
31
"My view... would be that we are entering upon a new and interim society which is neither capitalist nor socialist, but in which we can achieve central planning without loss of individual initiative, by the mere process of absorbing initiative in the function of planning."
31
"A society deadened by a smothering network of laws while finding release in moral chaos is not likely to be either happy or stable."
31
"Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime."
31
"The State becomes society or humanity on the ethical side, a production and trade system on the economic side."
31
"I think I can speak for every Senator, saying that he or she ran for the Senate because we want to help make this a better place; that is, we want to help our States and help America."
31
"Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium."
31
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