Quotes About Society

You could see a man talking to himself as just plain crazy, or read about the criminal on the front page of the daily paper and ponder the corruption of the human heart, without having to think about whether the criminal or lunatic said something about your own fate.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

I believe a stronger sense of empathy would tilt the balance of our current politics in favor of those people who are struggling in this society. After all if they are like us, then their struggles are our own. If we fail to help we diminish ourselves.

A healthy, dose of guilt never hurt anybody. It's what civilization was built on, guilt. A highly underrated emotion.

The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see the world through their eyes.

They spend half they lives worrying about what white folks think.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

A rejection of absolutism, in all its forms, may sometimes slip into moral relativism or even nihilism, an erosion of values that hold society together, but for most of our history it has encouraged the very process of information gathering, analysis, argument, and persuasion which allows us to make better, if not perfect, choices – not only about the means to our ends, but also the ends themselves.

I knew that in order to accomplish that, I needed to use language that spoke to all Americans and propose policies that touched everyone—a topflight education for every child, quality healthcare for every American. I needed to embrace white people as allies rather than impediments to change, and to couch the African American struggle in terms of a broader struggle for a fair, just, and generous society.

This dual sense of individual advancement and collective decline that I thought accounted for some of the most troubling attitudes I heard in some conversations.

Our individualism has always been bound by a set of communal values, the glue upon which every healthy society depends.

too much focus on civil rights, police misconduct, or other issues considered specific to Black people risked triggering suspicion, if not a backlash, from the broader electorate.

But they do expect that if they're willing to work, they should be able to find a job that supports a family.

In the battle for Russia's identity, fear and fatalism usually beat out hope and change.

the only clear, defining thing about being a man, about being masculine, is excelling in sports and sexual conquest— BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: And violence.

if you needed a woman, you were weak. Family was restrictive to your male freedoms.

Having the son of a black African with a Muslim name and socialist ideas ensconced in the White House with the full force of the U.S. government under his command was precisely the thing they wanted to be defended against.

I don't see kids smiling around here no more. You look at 'em listen to 'em… they seem worried all the time, mad about something. They got nothing they trust. Not their parents. Not God. Not themselves. And that's not right. That just ain't the way things supposed to be… kids not smiling

Carl Sandburg poem come to life. There were inner-city kids jostling one another on a field trip, well-coiffed bankers working their flip phones, farmers in seed caps looking to widen the locks that allowed industrial barges to take their crops to market. You'd see Latina moms looking to fund a new day-care center and middle-aged biker crews, complete with muttonchops and leather jackets, trying to stop yet another legislative effort to make them wear helmets.

A literate society depends on three things: culture, communication, and choice. One could add that culture is also faith and morality, that communication is also social interaction and equality, and that choice is both individualism and political action.

According to a recent poll [...] 94% of Americans agree that people who work fulltime should be able to earn enough to keep their families out of poverty.

In today's world, other people have become an obstacle to our individual pursuits.

Something is wrong, very wrong, when a single person in good health, a person who in addition possesses a working car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow. You don't need a degree in economics to see that wages are too low and rents too high.

We don't usually talk about American nationalism, but it is a mark of how deep it runs that we apply the word "nationalism" to Serbs, Russians, and others, while believing ourselves to possess a uniquely superior version called "patriotism.