Quotes About Society

David Jenkins has observed that "The impression has begun to get about that the Industrial Revolution is not going to work out after all.

Artificiality and work have steadily increased since its inception and are known as culture: in domesticating animals and plants man necessarily domesticated himself.

As Pierre Manent described it, the city is anything but a family or community. "In reality, it subordinates the family and the group.… It takes young men from their families living, and brings them back dead.

The amount of work per capita increases with the evolution of culture and the amount of leisure per capita decreases.

If machines can be human, humans can be machines.

In fact, in an overwhelmingly commodified existence, consumption becomes the number one form of entertainment.

DeVries is correct in his judgment that duration of life dropped sharply upon contact with civilization.

The idealists will always be in society, and we will survive.

So I simply don't buy the concept of "Generation X" as the "lost generation." I see too many good kids out there, kids who are ready and willing to do the right thing, just as Jack was. Their distractions are greater, though. There's no more simple life with simple choices for the young.

You use your money to buy privacy because during most of your life you aren't allowed to be normal.

I was always fascinated by people who are considered completely normal, because I find them the weirdest of all

France and the whole of Europe have a great culture and an amazing history. Most important thing, though, is that people there know how to live! In America they've forgotten all about it. I'm afraid that the American culture is a disaster.

There's no future in England's dreamingNo future, no future, no future for youNo future, no future, no future for me

It's a repressive society where you can't be horrible, I'm not horrible, they made me horrible, I'm just honest.

Sometimes the most positive thing you can be in a boring society is absolutely negative.

It is easy for me to love myself, but for ladies to do it is another question altogether.

more killers?

Here's the thing about middle-class people. They pretend not to look, but they do. They're too polite to actually stare. Instead, they do this weird thing of catching sight of Will in their field of vision and then determinedly not looking at him. Until he's gone past, at which point their gaze flickers toward him, even while they remain in conversation with someone else. They won't talk about him, though. Because that would be rude.

I realized with mild disappointment that charity could mean something quite different here: that it was not enough to give, you had to be seen to be giving. Hospitals bore the names of their donors in six-foot-high letters above the door. Balls were named after those who funded them. Even buses bore lists of names alongside their rear windows. Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Gopnik were known as generous benefactors because they were visible in society as being so.

And the New York rich . . . well, they do not live like anyone.

She tries to imagine Carl getting his pubic hair lasered to make sure he was attractive enough for her, and it's so unthinkable she laughs out loud. And now, because she is female and did all the things expected of her, she's been discarded for a younger, supposedly sweeter model.

I thought about the fact that there seemed to be such a high cost to anything a woman chose to do with her life, unless she simply aimed low. But I knew that already, didn't I?

Here's the thing about middle-class people. They pretend not to look, but they do. They were too polite to actually stare. Instead, they did this weird thing of catching sight of Will in their field of vision and then determinedly not looking at him. Until he'd gone past, at which point their gaze would flicker towards him, even while they remained in conversation with someone else. They wouldn't talk about him, though. Because that would be rude.

attend a tea with Mrs. Lena Nofcier, chairman