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Society Quotes
"You know when I really realized like "wow" what a gift this is was when I sang at camp and a girl wrote me a letter and said the song that I sung kept her from committing suicide."
7
"I smiled at him. America, I said quietly, just like that. What is it? The sweepings of every country including our own. Isn't that true? That's a fact."
7
"If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no unemployment -- assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure. In America men often work long hours even when they are well off; such men, naturally, are indignant at the idea of leisure for wage-earners, except as the grim punishment of unemployment; in fact, they dislike leisure even for their sons."
7
"He was ugly, himself. Weird-ugly. But ugliness in a man doesn't matter, much. Ugliness in a woman is her life."
7
"There are two sides to life for every individual: a personal life, in which his freedom exists in proportion to the abstract nature of his interests, and an elemental life within the swarm of humanity, in which a man inevitably follows laws laid down for him."
7
"Wars come from egotism and selfishness. Every macrocosmic or world war has its origin in microcosmic wars going on inside millions and millions of individuals."
7
"They would sweep their poverty under the carpet if only they had one."
7
"Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level."
7
"We went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein refused to account for his weapons of mass destruction, consistently violated UN resolutions and in a post-9/11 world no American president could afford to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt."
7
"By now, with all our modern technology, there should be no poverty left on earth."
7
"Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age."
7
"Mob law is the most forcible expression of an abnormal public opinion; it shows that society is rotten to the core."
7
"Some capitalism suffers from cronyism. All of socialism is perverted by the crony statism of the powerful few."
7
"But that's the whole aim of civilization: to make everything a source of enjoyment."
7
"It is here that we see the dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably Communism bristles with tanks and rockets, no matter what successes it attains in seizing the planet, it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity."
7
"O.K., so I'm not so smart. I'm working class. But it's the working class that keeps the world running, and it's the working class that gets exploited. What the hell kind of revolution have you got just tossing out big words that working-class people can't understand? What the hell kind of social revolution is that? I mean, I'd like to make the world a better place, too. If somebody's really being exploited, we've got to put a stop to it. That's what I believe, and that's why I ask questions."
7
"No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse."
7
"Being graded for memorizing male accomplishments with the deep message that we can learn what others do but never do it ourselves."
7
"A limited state with free economic systems is the soil where the liberty tree blossoms."
7
"For a short while she considered the idea of orchestral courtesy. Certainly one should avoid giving political offence: German orchestras, of course, used to be careful about playing Wagner abroad, at least in some countries, choosing instead German composers who were somewhat more ... apologetic."
7
"Individualism is rather like innocence; there must be something unconscious about it."
7
"Back in Russia we were dirt-poor. Here in the West we are still poor but have risen above the dirt to tower alongside stalks of grass!"
7
"Connie felt again the tightness, niggardliness of the men of her generation. They were so tight, so scared of life!"
7
"I find it a challenge to cooperate in a society where it's considered moral to critique a rA©sumA© yet immoral to critique morality."
7
"Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people's right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil."
7
"People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for, and they have a right to subject their children to it."
6
"You've got all these books on self help, getting to know yourself, doing the right thing, eating the so-called right foods, even down to what books you have on your shelves. People are encouraged to look to themselves first as opposed to being a part of society."
6
"Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform."
6
"Poverty advances discrimination and corruption because society classifies the rich and poor. Poverty augments anger, selfishness, hatred and envy among the people.Poverty entwined with desperation ends up in violence."
6
"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."
6
"We need a President who is not afraid of complexity, who believes in an open and tolerant society, and who knows that the world can be made new again - and that President is Al Gore."
6
"Who ain't a slave? Tell me that... I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way-either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content."
6
"I wander through each chartered street,Near where the chartered Thames does flow;A mark in every face I meet,Marks of weakness, marks of woe.In every cry of every man,In every infant's cry of fear,In every voice, in every ban,The mind-forged manacles I hear:How the chimney-sweeper's cryEvery blackening church appals,And the hapless soldier's sighRuns in blood down palace-walls.But most, through midnight streets I hearHow the youthful harlot's curseBlasts the new-born infant's tear,And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse."
6
"The destiny of our society is yours to make and you have a vastly greater importance to the world than we do."
6
"Neglect of women is the major cause for the society's downfall."
6
"Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals."
6
"In America, anyone can become president. That's the problem."
6
"Being different isn't a sin, but intolerance is."
6
"And from a military school which taught me that to fit into society, you can't just do anything you damn well please because it will suit you. And that it's much better to be with the winners than it is with the losers."
6
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