Quotes About Society

Though many of the poor have come to see the affluent middle class as its enemy, that class actually stands between the poor and the real powers in this society - the administrative octopus with its head in Washington, the conglomerates, the military complex.

Outsourcing, in and of itself, isn't responsible for the erosion of America's high tech infrastructure. The short-term thinking that led to a lot of bad outsourcing decisions is the root cause. And short-term thinking isn't a problem confined to the executive suite. It's a problem in Washington and in our society as a whole.

We are all Julian Assange. Serious reporters discuss classified information every day - go to any Washington or New York dinner party where real journalists are present, and you will hear discussion of leaked or classified information. That is journalists' job in a free society.

Historically, if you look at people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, people with disposable incomes have always been agricultural innovators.

Washington shows the Negro not only at his best, but also at his worst.

It's time for a 21st-century retirement age. If 40 is the new 20 and 50 is the new 30, why shouldn't 70 be the new 65? The last time Washington politicians tinkered ever so gingerly with the government-sanctioned retirement age, Ronald Reagan was in office and Generation X-ers were all in diapers.

Sin is etched into women's very form. To the devil with her form, then.

I reject 'poor' as the artificial creation of humans. Hunger exists, though, and a hungry creature is entitled to eat.

And there are no years without plague. Some years it doesn't reach the rich, but it always lurks among the poor.

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy.

Aileen Wuornos, Belle Gunness, and . . . A quick search on the internet gives me Juana Barraza, Jane Toppan, and Nannie Doss.

The fidelity question is difficult for me. Society has made us believe we're supposed to be monogamous when we're not killer whales, or whatever the monogamous species is.

Drugs," Estelle said. "Money and drugs, and that's the history of civilization.

If you find a way to live as you wish, unnatural though it might be, you'll carry on your shoulders the weight of a thousand wives' wishes. Though aloud all may curse you as a very devil.

Did you ever notice that women can seem common while men never do? You won't ever hear anyone describe a man's appearance as common. The common man means the average man, a typical man, a decent hardworking person of modest dreams and resources. A common woman is a woman who looks cheap. A woman who looks cheap doesn't have to be respected, and so she has a certain value, a certain cheap value.

Another sign, NO TANK TOPS. Under it, typically, an entire three-generation family, all in tank tops, flesh spilling. And what was it about shoulders? What was law enforcement's fear of shoulders?

She was drunk, as everyone was, most of the time.

The rest of us lined up for debugging and muumuus.

I can't stand men crying. It's wrong, isn't it? Their faces aren't made for it, they kind of crumple; it's painful to watch.

My dear, don't be foolish, there's nothing strange about you, someday you may meet a man you can love. And supposing you don't, well, what of it, Stephen? Marriage isn't the only career for a woman.

Most people gaze neither into the past nor the future; they explore neither truth nor lies. They gaze at the television.

Why are you still single, Ruben? Seriously. You're great with kids and close to your own family. You're gorgeous – that goes without saying – have a fairly decent job and appear to have all your teeth. What am I missing?

I desire a society which selects its rulers from the best elements of every class and denies the right of any class or corporation to usurp the government itself--whether it be the nobles, the clergy, the bourgeoisie, or the proletariat. For government by any class is fatal to the welfare of the whole

The inevitable, tragic corollary of civilization is populace.