Quotes About Society

It was found that men become neurotic because they cannot tolerate the degree of privation that society imposes on them in virtue of its cultural ideals, and it was supposed that a return to greater possibilities of happiness would ensue if these standards were abolished or greatly relaxed.

La société transforme le désagréable en injuste.

The liberty of the individual is not a benefit of culture. It was greatest before any culture, though indeed it had little value at that time, because the individual was hardly in a position to defend it.

Vicdan?n talepleriyle Ben'in yetenekleri aras?ndaki gerilim, 'suçluluk duygusu' olarak alg?lan?r. Toplumsal duygular da, diÄŸer duygularla özdeÅŸ biçimde Ben-ülküsü temeline dayan?rlar." Sigmund Freud, 'Ben ve O', sayfa 67

Three sources of suffering: the superior power of nature, the frailty of our bodies, and the inadequacy of the institutions that regulate people's relations with one another in the family, the state and society.

Sigmund Freud

Em matéria de sexualidade, somos todos, no momento, doentes ou sãos, não mais do que hipócritas.

Disimulan en la vida social sus estados patológicos mientras les es posible y sólo recurren al médico en estadios muy avanzados de su enfermedad, estadios tales como aquellos que en una tuberculosis excluyen ya el ingreso en un sanatorio.

Of all the erroneous and superstitious beliefs of mankind that have supposedly been surmounted there is not one whose residues do not live on among us to-day in the lower strata of civilized peoples or even in the highest strata of cultural society. What has once come to life clings tenaciously to its existence. One feels inclined to doubt sometimes whether the dragons of primaeval days are really extinct.

Die Strenge der ethischen Forderungen würde nicht viel schaden, wenn die Erziehung sagte: So sollten die Menschen sein, um glücklich zu werden und andere glücklich zu machen; aber man muß damit rechnen, daß sie nicht so sind. Anstatt dessen läßt man den Jugendlichen glauben, daß alle anderen die ethischen Vorschriften erfüllen, also tugendhaft sind. Damit begründet man die Forderung, daß er auch so werde.

Não quebro muitas vezes a cabeça a propósito da questão do bem e do mal, mas, em média, descobri muito pouco «bem» entre os homens. Segundo o que deles sei, são na maioria escumalha, quer se reclamem da ética desta ou daquela doutrina, quer de nenhuma.

You didn't think it was possible for a woman to wander the streets in the same spirit and manner as a man. A female pedestrian was subject to constant disruptions: stares, comments, catcalls, gropes. A woman was raised to be always on guard: Was this guy walking too close? Was that guy following her? How, then, could she ever relax enough to experience the loss of sense of self, the joy of pure being that was the ideal of true flânerie?

I've known plenty of women who brace themselves whenever they leave the house, even a few who try to avoid leaving the house. Of course, a woman has only to wait until she's a certain age, when she becomes invisible, and—problem solved.

That there could be something in the world that a woman could want more than children has been viewed as unacceptable. Things may be marginally different now, but, even if there is something she wants more than children, that is no reason for a woman to remain childless. Any normal woman, it is understood, wants—and should want—both.

Do everything you can to get men to look at you, and when they do, pretend they don't exist. Because only a slut looks back. Is that perfectly clear? Early lesson on the female condition.

You posted an essay, "How to Be a Flâneur," on the custom of urban strolling and loitering and its place in literary culture. You caught some flak for questioning whether there could really be such a thing as a flâneuse. You didn't think it was possible for a woman to wander the streets in the same spirit and manner as a man. A female pedestrian was subject to constant disruptions: stares

I didn't think you were wrong about any of this. I've known plenty of women who brace themselves whenever they leave the house, even a few who try to avoid leaving the house. Of course, a woman has only to wait until she's a certain age, when she becomes invisible, and—problem solved.

He was saying that perhaps it was a mistake to bring human beings into a world that had such a strong possibility of becoming, in their lifetimes, a bleak and terrifying if not wholly unlivable place.

Self-care, relieving one's own everyday anxieties, avoiding stress: these had become some of our society's highest goals, he said—higher, apparently, than the salvation of society itself. The mindfulness rage was just another distraction.

I believe that fear of being a failure plays a large part in goading many women who are ambivalent about motherhood into maternity. That, and the fear of missing out

She believed that, in our culture, at least, people were much freer than they thought they were and had more options than they seemed willing to acknowledge.

It is one thing to be the common-or-garden villain who says, I don't care if I have wronged you by breaking my word or stealing your goods. But it is another to achieve the rather extraordinary pitch of villainy, which says, I don't even recognize that you have a complaint. A society in which people are incapable of recognizing others as having a complaint, whatever they do, would be one without an ethic - but for that very reason, it would be hard to recognize it as a society at all.

The point is not for women simply to take power out of men's hands, since that wouldn't change anything about the world. It's a question precisely of destroying that notion of power.

In an era when most bands were about nothing, the Manics were about everything: an eloquent scream, a j'accuse to the entire moribund millennium.