Quotes About Social norms

Men have been buying my women's coats for years.

People know there is a difference between what you do and what you accept. There is a difference between me knowing that people swear, me hearing people swear and me swearing, and everyone accepting that this is something you can do as much as you like.

I don't think people should be able to swear whenever they want. I just don't want the federal government making laws about swearing. We should trust people's own instincts about what is appropriate in any given situation.

I have a few girlfriends, but nearly all my friends are guys. I don't think I ever wore girl clothes. I wore baggy jeans, baggy T-shirts, sweaters, just to avoid the looks that everyone gives you when you're a young female in the world.

We don't do 'dating' in Sweden.

The biggest crime in England is to rise above your station. It's fine to be a pop star. 'Oh, it's great, lots of fun, aren't they sweet, these pop stars! But to think you have anything to say about how the world should work? What arrogance!'

The way that social norms become social norms is not through any systematic process. It is through a flowering of an understanding within a culture.

You are a married couple, I take it?" And she gave us a hard stare, trying to see a wedding ring through my gloves, I suspected. "Of course," Darcy said briskly. "Mr. and Mrs. Chomondley-Fanshaw. That's spelled 'Featherstonehaugh,' by the way.

Oh, come on, Joanna. It's the nineteen seventies. Women have abortions all the time. It's no big thing anymore." "It is for the baby," I said. "And it would be for me. My father would never

Multi-active cultures are very flexible. If Pedro interrupted Carlos's conversation, which was already in the process of interrupting Sven's tennis, this was quite normal and acceptable in Portugal. It is not acceptable in

If you look at economics textbooks, you will learn that homo economicus can think like Albert Einstein, store as much memory as IBM's Big Blue, and exercise the willpower of Mahatma Gandhi. Really. But the folks that we know are not like that. Real people have trouble with long division if they don't have a calculator, sometimes forget their spouse's birthday, and have a hangover on New Year's Day. They are not homo economicus; they are homo sapiens.

It follows that either desirable or undesirable behavior can be increased, at least to some extent, by drawing public attention to what others are doing. (Note to political parties: If you would like to increase turnout, please do not lament the large numbers of people who fail to vote.)*

The Spotlight Effect One reason why people expend so much effort conforming to social norms and fashions is that they think that others are closely paying attention to what they are doing. If you wear a suit to a social event where everyone else has gone casual, you feel like everyone is looking at you funny and wondering why you are such a geek. If you are subject to such fears, here is a possibly comforting thought: they aren't really paying as much attention to you as you think.

The Shambaughs came, bringing Letty. She simpered up to me. Her eyes summed up the lace tippets on my Princess dress and the wide taffeta sash that was cutting me in half. Well, Blossom, just look at you! she said in her mother's own grown-up voice. I have always said a good dress will cover up any flaw. Then you had better get one like it, I replied.

In shaking hands I was doing something that I was to do countless times in the years to come: acting in conformity with what others expected of me even though, by the very nature and form of my life, I did not and could not share their spirit.

One of the young men she had just met had obviously paid for her ride. Her face was red when he came down the aisle. "I guess," he said, grinning, "if I pay your fare I can sit by you.

Wives were not supposed to hate their husbands. It was not in the proper order of things.

Navy Cotillion was where officers' children were supposed to learn the fine points of manners, dancing, white gloves, and other unrealities of life. It also was where children were supposed to learn, as if the preceding fourteen or fifteen years hadn't already made it painfully clear, that generals outrank colonels who, in turn, outrank majors and captains and lieutenants, and everyone, but everyone, outranks children. Within the ranks of children, boys always outrank girls.

Chaperoning rules had relaxed since the outbreak of war. It was no longer scandalous for a single woman to go out unescorted in the daytime.

It is still more likely that a woman's power would be seen as aggression, and a man's power would be seen as assertion.

The wise man should withdraw his soul within, out of the crowd, and keep it in freedom and power to judge things freely; but as for externals, he should wholly follow the accepted fashions and forms.

Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country, as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court.

There is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.

Passionate intimacy between people of the same sex was common in pre—Civil War America. The lack of clear sexual categories (homo-, hetero-, bi-) made same-sex affection unself-conscious and widespread.