Quotes About Society

A free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin.

What I've always said is that I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would've, had I've been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism.

I'm starting to realize that being born into this social world is a little like being born into clean air. You take it in as soon as you breathe, and pretty soon you don't even realize that while you can walk around with clear lungs, other people are wearing oxygen masks just to survive.

My reading of American religious history is that religion always functions best from the margins of society and not in the councils of power. Once you identify the faith with a particular candidate or party or with the quest for political influence, ultimately it is the faith that suffers. Compromise may work in politics. It's less appropriate to the realm of faith and belief.

I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.

Most of us know, now, that Rousseau was wrong: that man, when you knock his chains off, sets up the death camps. Soon we shall know everything the 18th century didn't know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us.

Unbalanced power poisons introspection. In its vacated space lay living society's imperative questions, unseen, unphrased, unasked, unanswered.

Racist behavior in our society is largely static, unnoticed, unremarked, and unconsciously accommodated by Americans of all colors.

Come out. Come out. Wherever you are. Monstrous systems do turn people into monsters. Every day. All the time. With unerring efficiency. But those in our society who hallucinate somewhere blithely in the upper reaches of its class remove, prefer not to know this. Oh, I think they know it, but whenever possible they elect not to think about it. Not to see it.

I was troubled by this, finding their passion as inexplicable as that of white American truck drivers who had supported Ronald Reagan. The Cuban Americans claimed that Castro had rendered Cuba an "unfree" country. But had they thought Cuba a freer society before Castro?

Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.

The greatest boon of modern life is also the greatest villain: the availability of plentiful food.30,31,32,33,34,35 Or, rather, foodlike substances manufacturers concoct with the exact combinations of sugar, salt, and fat that we most desire.

War is the health of the state. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense.

Thousands of years and many civilizations have defined a marriage as the union between one man and one woman. With few exceptions, those civilizations that did not follow that perished.

He had high hopes for society, and though his hopes were too often dashed, he remained a raging optimist.

WE'VE PLACED a lot of emphasis in this country on the idea of people's rights. That's how it should be, but it makes no sense to talk about rights without also talking about responsibilities. Rights have to come from somewhere, and they come from the community. In return, all of us have a responsibility to the community. Some people call this the "communitarian" movement, but I call it common sense. This

A society concerned with shalom will care for the most marginalized among them. God has a special concern for the poor and needy, because how we treat them reveals our hearts, regardless of the rhetoric we employ to make ourselves sound just.

God commands both individuals and the society in which they live to be generous and always take care of the poor. In such a community, shalom has a chance to thrive. In such a community, God will actually be glad to assign his name and dwell.

What society judged was not the severity of the disease but the social acceptability of the individuals affected with it…

Humans who have been subjected to a lifetime of irrational bigotry on the part of a mainstream society can be excused for harboring unreasonable fears.

society whose moral ideals inhibit its own defense is a society doomed to destruction by those predators it defines as immoral.

If we men were required to wear sized penis stockings outside our pants, our discussions of women's breasts would be markedly less frequent and our preferences more vaguely defined.

A society whose moral ideas inhibit their own defense will always suffer defeat by the very predators they deem immoral.

Didn't understand the nation's habit of clubbing itself each morning with a list of tragedy and doom before trying to go cheerfully into the day. Like arsenic, it had to have a cumulative effect.