Quotes About Society

If we want developed societies with women doctors, political leaders, teachers, bus drivers, and computer programmers, we will need qualified people to give loving care to their children. And there is no reason why every society should not enjoy such loving paid child care.

Some odd optical property of our highly polarized and unequal society makes the poor almost invisible to their economic superiors.

el colapso económico debería haber convertido en historia esa idea de que la pobreza es un fracaso del individuo, o el fruto de una disfunción interna. En las colas del paro y las de la beneficencia hay tantas hormigas como cigarras, tantos optimistas habituales como depresivos crónicos.

Barbara Ehrenreich

In my experience, any class or assembly restricted to girls was going to be in some way degrading, like the one where we'd been convened to receive the information that from now on our bodies would be producing poisons that would need to be discharged on a monthly basis, through an unspecified orifice. The restriction of the typing requirement to girls suggested some sort of connection between our festering genitals and the need to serve in a clerical-type occupation, perhaps as a punishment.

esa chifladura general de los estadounidenses con el pensamiento positivo no sirvió para hacerles más felices.

El pensamiento positivo parece obligatorio en este mundo del cáncer de pecho, hasta el punto de que si alguien es infeliz tiene casi que disculparse

The Latin Cross is not inappropriate for a church that composed itself entirely of men, for in several early societies the Latin Cross was a primary phallic symbol.

There are real problems, not just money and power, in my own lands.

Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals.

Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.

Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?

Most of the girls my age, or even younger, have babies. They appear way too young to be married, till you look in their eyes. Then you'll see it. Their eyes look happy and sad at the same time, but unexcited by anything, shifting easily off to the side as if they've already seen most of what there is. Married eyes.

Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of its past

The last generations's worst fears become the next one's B-grade entertainment.

Modern people are just like ancient ones, only more numerous.

Communism? Most people have no idea what it is. I do not exaggerate. Look around this restaurant, ask any of these fine citizens. 'Excuse me, sir, I've been thinking of an idea, a bunch of working people owning the means of their own production. What do you make of that?' You know, he might be all for it.

Food culture in the United States has long been cast as the property of a privileged class. It is nothing of the kind. Culture is the property of a species.

Yet I stake a claim, I am here, for I must be somewhere. But only as a child it seems, struggling to understand what every wife and gentleman passing on the street seems to know by rote. Whom to love, whom to castigate.

Well, yeah, Dovey said. That's America. We watch shows about rich people's houses and their designer dresses and we drool. It's patriotic.

when the public nerve is aroused, the most impressive capacity of man is his skill for lying.

The guys in charge of everything right now are so old. They really are, Mom. Older than you. They figured out the meaning of life in, I guess, the nineteen fifties and sixties. When it looked like there would always be plenty of everything. And they're applying that to now. It's just so ridiculous.

He got born in the historical moment of no more free lunch. Friends will probably count more than money, because wanting too much stuff is going to be toxic.

Because DSS pay is basically the fuck-you peanut butter sandwich type of paycheck. That's what the big world thinks it's worth, to save white-trash orphans.