Quotes About Society

Lion glances back at the pigeons. Sees a flicker he didn't notice before. Remembers that the de-extinction program was a failed effort, realizes he's looking at a light-vert. An AR projection of an almost. The bad dreams of a society disguised as a good time.

For if I am interesting to you precisely to the extent that I'm not one of you, then your desire to civilize me, to turn me into a good citizen of Nuremberg, can lead to nothing but loss of interest.

In this way of thinking, the fact that women show a lot of skin or that men curse in public is not a sign of cultural decay. On the contrary, it's a sign that they live in a society that is so civilized that they don't have to fear being harassed or assaulted in response.

People see violence as moral, not immoral: across the world and throughout history, more people have been murdered to mete out justice than to satisfy greed.

Oscar Wilde's prophecy that "as long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

When I grew up, bullying was considered a natural part of boyhood. It would have strained belief to think that someday the president of the United States would deliver a speech about its evils, as Barack Obama did in 2011. As we care about more of humanity, we're apt to mistake the harms around us for signs of how low the world has sunk rather than how high our standards have risen.

When it comes to correct English, there's no one in charge; the lunatics are running the asylum.

No society can be simultaneously fair, free, and equal. If it is fair, people who work harder can accumulate more. If it is free, people will give their wealth to their children. But then it cannot be equal, for some people will inherit wealth they did not earn.

Psychologists have long known that people tend to see their own lives through rose-colored glasses: they think they're less likely than the average person to become the victim of a divorce, layoff, accident, illness, or crime. But change the question from the people's lives to their society, and they transform from Pollyanna to Eeyore.

a free market puts a premium on empathy.

countries that combine free markets with more taxation, social spending, and regulation than the United States (such as Canada, New Zealand, and Western Europe) turn out to be not grim dystopias but rather pleasant places to live, and they trounce the United States in every measure of human flourishing, including crime, life expectancy, infant mortality, education, and happiness

Everything in human affairs is connected to everything else, and that is especially true of violence. Across time and space, the more peaceable societies also tend to be richer, healthier, better educated, better governed, more respectful of their women, and more likely to engage in trade

Trend-setters are members of upper classes who adopt the styles of lower classes to differentiate themselves from middle classes, who wouldn't be caught dead in lower-class styles because they're the ones in danger of being mistaken for them.

The Bible depicts a world that, seen through modern eyes, is staggering in its savagery.

the fact that women show a lot of skin or that men curse in public is not a sign of cultural decay. On the contrary, it's a sign that they live in a society that is so civilized that they don't have to fear being harassed or assaulted in response.

Declines in violence are caused by political, economic, and ideological conditions that take hold in particular cultures at particular times. If the conditions reverse, violence could go right back up.

Chris Rock observed, "This is the first society in history where the poor people are fat.

The historical trajectory of violence affects not only how life is lived but how it is understood.

I suggested that a better understanding of human nature in the light of modern science can point the way to an approach to politics that is more sophisticated.

Eisner, together with the historian Randolph Roth, notes that crime often shoots up in decades in which people question their society and government, including the American Civil War, the 1960s, and post-Soviet Russia.33

The combination of a shorter workweek, more paid time off, and a longer retirement means that the fraction of a person's life that is taken up by work has fallen by a quarter just since 1960.

In either case genetics and neuroscience are showing that a heart of darkness cannot always be blamed on parents or society.

Though these developments were sometimes linked to the word progress, the usage was ironic: "progress" unguided by humanism is not progress.

Aristocratic, religious, and martial cultures have always looked down on commerce as tawdry and venal.