Quotes About Social dynamics

Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.

Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

She turned and walked away, pausing only a moment at the door to glance over her shoulder. William wanted to think she was looking at him, but he figured she was probably more interested in his friend. William decided to let it drop. There was no telling what Miss Dandridge might be thinking.

I honestly see the battle between Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative as the exact same dynamic--there's a group of people in this world that don't like conflict and care about what other people are going through, and then there's this other group of people in the world who hate that. 'Suck it up, man, we're not coddling you, take care of yourself, what's your problem?' It's jocks versus geeks, and I've always referred to life as perpetual high school because it never stops.

what made this sense emphatic was that all this time, as the policeman was screaming, local people—slum dwellers, barefoot children, women with bundles—were passing by, glancing at me, and moving on. They knew what was happening

I'd violated the primary rule of junior and senior high-- don't get people talking about you too much. This was wearing the brightest shirt on the playground. This was Mom giving you a kiss in the lobby.

She almost reminds the engineer of certain types in high school whom everyone adored because you sensed it made no difference to them whether you adored them.

Someone has farted; no one knows just who, but this isn't like a normal adult place where everybody coolly pretends a fart didn't happen; here everybody has to make their little comment.

students tend to carry their own special psychic scars: nerd, geek, dweeb, wonk, fag, wienie, four-eyes, spazola, limp-dick, needle-dick, dickless, dick-nose, pencil-neck; getting your violin or laptop TP or entomologist's kill-jar broken over your large head by thick-necked kids on the playground—and the show pulls down solid FM ratings, though

For some reason I was reluctant to ask anybody what had happened. I hate being the person who always doesn't know what's going on and has to ask somebody; it always seems like everybody else knows what's going on. This is a clear low-status marker, and I resisted it.

I was living in a culture and not a civilization and I could learn how that culture worked only by living with it.

Happy is the people that is without history. And thrice is the people without sociology.

I'm not good at having friends. I mean, I can make myself useful to people. I can fit in. I get invited to parties and I can sit at any table I want in the cafeteria. But actually trusting someone when they have nothing to gain from me just doesn't make sense. All friendships are negotiations of power.

Socially we balanced each other out. He was the guy who came into the room and everyone was relieved. I made people deeply uneasy, myself most of all.

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

Discomfort begets discomfort in others.

What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.

researchers have found that many well-liked girls aren't considered to be popular, and that many girls who are considered to be popular aren't actually well liked.

Had Simpering Rachel who clutched men's arms at parties in order to repel a competitor for his attentions been there all along? How awful, she thought to herself. How absolutely awful.

The vampires in the 'VAMPS' series judge each other as harshly as they judge humans, and basically, vampires don't get along very well. So you've got a culture that's from cradle to grave like the worst high school you've ever been in.

Science is performed by people, and it's subject to all the various foibles that plague the rest of our social dynamics.

Harlem for me is Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Washington, D.C., in one place. You have very significant churches that have had national ramifications. At the same time, you have politics. On top of all that, you have entertainment because you have 70 years of music that came out of here, and if you scratch that, gangsterism happens.

I think we have a rawer version of capitalism and a more fragile community and family base than other nations. We are a more individualistic culture. From the Boston Tea Party on, we've had too little faith in government.

Special Agent Recht looked at me, then stared across the room to where Deborah was talking to the captain. "What a family," she said, and walked past me to rejoin her generic-looking partner. I thought of several very good comebacks that would have put her neatly in her place, but after all, her place was actually several rungs above mine on the food chain, so I just called out, "Have a nice day," to her back and headed out the door to my car.