Quotes About Society

What we do with the product of genius is first of all ram it down to the lowest common denominator and then multiply it by the vulgarest possible fraction. -from "Pawley's Peepholes

Why was I condemned to live in a democracy where every fool's vote is equal to a sensible man's? If all the energy that is put into diddling mugs for their votes could be turned on to useful work, what a nation we could be!

We don't seem to be good at integrating novelties with our social lives, do we? The world of the etiquette book fell to pieces at the end of the last century, and there has been no code of manners to tell us how to deal with anything invented since. Not even rules for an individualist to break, which is itself another blow at freedom. Rather a pity, don't you think?

A world where a man is able to hunt his fellow man! How could he be called a man?

don't know whether that would be the zenith or nadir of decadence

Far away in South Kensington Mrs

I don't want to be overly dramatic about it, but I think people more and more wonder, is this living, or are we just going through the motions? What's happening? Is everything being leached out of life? Is the whole texture and values and everything kind of draining away?

history is the negation of nature.

To combat cultural genocide one needs a critique of civilization itself. -Gary Snyder

René Girard proposes that rituals of sacrifice are a necessary counter to endemic aggression and violence in society.

When you get old....you become invisible. It's just the truth. And yet it's freeing in a way.

I suppose when they reach a certain age some men are afraid to grow up. It seems the older the men get, the younger their new wives get.

Lucky for us Emily was not a man," said Julia, "or she might have drunk herself to death at the Black Bull. It was better to write Wuthering Heights, but she really had no choice.

For all civilisations are like elaborate campings-out, a complicated picnic in the face of nature's discomforts.

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you. "But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers that the rest of us paid to educate...Part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Things became more civilized all of a sudden. Coffee does that. Or maybe it is women who do that.

Why must women wake up and paint their faces? Who came up with this idea? What's wrong with washing and moisturizing? So, if you care to wear make-up, go right ahead. No one's stopping you. I only suggest reconsidering. Is it totally necessary?

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.

Prejudice is even stronger in the hearts of men now than in Christ's day.

he was almost repulsive, without a single redeeming trait, Asa thought, watching him as the car rolled away, but a pillar, nevertheless, of a respectable world.

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.

in a society concerned primarily with process, the notion of deviance might have much less, if any, significance.

The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

A great poet has seldom sung of lawfully wedded happiness, but of free and secret love; and in this respect, too the time is coming when there will no longer be one standard of morality for poetry and another for life. To anyone tender of conscience, the ties formed by a free connection are stronger than the legal ones.