Quotes About Society

we have wholly abandoned ourselves to the mercy of technological progress. The roles are now reversed: humanity becomes, for technology, a means, an instrument for achieving a goal unknown and unknowable.

Dopóki nie skorzystaÅ'em z Internetu, nie wiedziaÅ'em, ?e na Å›wiecie jest tylu idiotów

Kryterium zdrowego rozsÄ…dku nie jest do historii ludzkiej stosowalne. Czy Averroes, Kant, Sokrates. Newton, Wolter, uwierzyliby, ?e w wieku dwudziestym plagÄ… miast, trucicielem pÅ'uc, masowym mordercÄ…, przedmiotem kultu stanie siÄ™ blaszany wózek na kóÅ'kach i ?e ludzie bÄ™dÄ… woleli gin?? w nim rozstrzaskiwani podczas masowych weekendowych wyjazdów, ani?eli siedzie? caÅ'o w domu?

Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. (tr. by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox)

What was civilization ever, really, but the attempt by man to talk himself into being good? Only good mind you. The rest had to be shoved somewhere out of sight, under the rug. Which History did at times politely, at times police-ly, and yet something was always sticking out, breaking lose, overthrowing.

Cows do not sell each other hay when they are hungry. Monkeys do not sell each other bananas. Only human beings can create the perception in other human beings that, even though they have showered, they still smell bad and need an underarm deodorant to set things right.

All human livings in industrial society are ultimately based on agricultural production and mineral extraction. One of the ways these processes are transferred upward and outward is through endless cycles of buying and selling. Which is to say that one cannot live in this kind of world without being involved in these cycles, nearly or remotely.

Had Schleicher been successful in his leadership of the German government at the end of 1932, he would probably have headed a very moderate, essentially anti-Nazi form of nationalist authoritarianism that would have avoided a sharp break with the republican constitution and promoted a reflationary, reformist economic policy along Keynesian or New Deal lines to revive the economy and conciliate German society.

she had inherited a sprawling archipelago of disparate languages and cultures that owed its semblance of unity mainly to the legal definition of Filipino citizenship and an allegiance to the Catholic Church. Despite its modern trappings, it was still a feudal society dominated by an oligarchy of rich dynasties, which had evolved from one of the world's longest continuous spans of Western imperial rule.

Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved—that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.

The idea that social restraints are all bad is based on a utopian and unrealistic vision of man. But in this movie [A Clockwork Orange], you have an example of social institutions gone a bit berserk. Obviously, social institutions faced with the law-and-order problem might choose to become grotesquely oppressive. The movie poses two extremes: it shows Alex in his pre-civilized state, and society committing a worse evil in attempting to cure him.

The quiet folks of America, who had played by all the rules and were now sweating in the frog pot, wanted someone who not only didn't care about speaking the King's English or living the rules of high society but openly mocked what the professional finger shakers from the media, academia, Hollywood, and politicians of both parties thought.

The process of cultural change is a long and difficult one.

We worked hard, we were just making it—then they raised the interest rates, or closed the schools, or changed the laws....

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many women feel like a failure as a woman.

Dove sono finiti gli yes dogs? e gli Hula-hoop? E le tartarughe Ninja? E la carta moschicida? E la democrazia?

Haven't you enough money?' For she knew that this is what is the matter with nearly everybody over twenty-five.

The big problem is how hard it is to achieve equal relationships in a society whose work policies, school schedules, and social programs were constructed on the assumption that male breadwinner families would always be the norm. Tensions between men and women today stem less from different aspirations than from the difficulties they face translating their ideals into practice.

Many people felt much closer to their own sex than to what was seen as the literally "opposite"—and alien—sex. In letters and diaries, women often referred to men as "the grosser sex.

While they lasted, male friendships included much more physical contact and emotional intensity than most heterosexual men are comfortable with today. James Blake, for example, noted from time to time in his diary that he and his friend, while roommates, shared a bed. "We retired early," he recorded one day in 1851, "and in each other's arms did friendship sink peacefully to sleep." Such behavior did not bother the fiancée of Blake's roommate a bit.25

As all these barriers to single living and personal autonomy gradually eroded, society's ability to pressure people into marrying, or keep them in a marriage against their wishes, was drastically curtailed. People no longer needed to marry in order to construct successful lives or long-lasting sexual relationships. With that, thousands of years of tradition came to an end.

The cultural consensus that everyone should marry and form a male breadwinner family was like a steamroller that crushed every alternative view. By the end of the 1950s even people who had grown up in completely different family systems had come to believe that universal marriage at a young age into a male breadwinner family was the traditional and permanent form of marriage.

The old equation has changed. Most families no longer save money by keeping wives at home. They lose by not having wives in the workplace, where women have more opportunities than in the past to earn decent wages.