Quotes About Society

Our culture places a very high premium on self-expression, but is relatively disinterested in producing selves that are worth expressing.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a snob. I don't have a problem with Applebee's per se. But I think we can all agree, as a civilized society, that lives shouldn't change there. Significant

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a snob. I don't have a problem with Applebee's per se. But I think we can all agree, as a civilized society, that lives shouldn't change there.

The mind of our country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.

On one of these gatherings, a guest speaker informed us that in 30 years, no one in America except the homeschoolers would know how to read or write. 

You don't like people?" Raf asked. "I don't like what people do to each other.

Every age, as Allan Bloom observed, is blind to its own worst madness.

Which do you think is an index of the more advanced civilization, knowing where the soap comes from, or not knowing?

Tyranny happens when a society turns against itself, with one part usurping the power of [the] whole and applying it to the exploitation of the rest. Corruption, or misdirection of public effort for private gain, is one common feature of tyranny.... Government through fear is another common feature of tyranny, since it it through fear that one part of society can induce the other to betray its own interests.

And the civil state is the actual state that results from the attempt to build a bridge from the state of nature to the state of reason. Its aim is to induce naturally rebarbative human beings to behave as if they were reasonable.

Justice does not exist in the abstract," Epicurus flatly asserts; it is just "a compact to not harm or be harmed";

It is certain in theory that the only moral foundation of government is, the consent of the people. But to what an extent shall we carry this principle?" he wanted to know. "Women will demand a vote," he intoned with horror, as might "every man who has not a farthing.

U.S. society, after all, continues to be starkly segregated along class and race lines, never allowing people to have the sort of interactions necessary to undo prejudices, stereotypes, and oppressions.

According to a Wall Street Journal article some 59 percent of Americans don t own a single book. Not a cookbook or even the Bible.

Social class. Class remains our national awkward topic, usually mumbled over in academic diversity workshops; indeed, most people don't know how to talk about class without automatically coupling it with race. That's because we Americans are loath to recognize that the sky's-the-limit potential we take as our birthright comes at a price far beyond what many Americans--of any race--can afford to pay.

Whatever (its) virtues, (the) writing explores the culture of work but marginalizes work itself.

by 1929, one out of every five Americans had a car (as opposed to one out of thirty-seven Englishmen, one out of forty Frenchmen, and one out of forty-eight Germans).

Instead of broadening the choices of how to look good, we have only broadened the ways we try to look alike. Women are headed toward one face, one body and one expression.

We no longer have natural selection. We have unnatural selection. Survival of the fittest has been replaced by survival of the fakest.

Who knows? If women all end up with the same face and body, men may gravitate toward the quirky. Then the chicks with the laugh lines and love handles will be the lucky ones.

We've become a nation of Frankensteins, and our monster is us. With everyone working so hard at altering their facades, we no longer have natural selection. We have unnatural selection.

American women are evolving backward--becoming more focused on their looks than ever. Feminism has been defeated by narcissism.

Women can stand on the Empire State Building and scream to the heavens that they are equal to men and liberated, but until they have the same anatomy, it's a lie. It's more of a man's world today than ever. Men can eat their cake in unlimited bakeries.

We had the Belle Epoque. Now we have the Botox Epoque, permeated by plastic emotions from antidepressants and plastic veneers from collagen, silicone, cosmetic surgery and Botox.