Quotes About Society

People are more twisted than people think.

A man is not made chivalrous by an extensive education. A college degree and advanced academic achievement are as often impediments to chivalry as they are inducements to it.

The egalitarianism that is the most offensive is the notion, whether embodied in opinion or law, that every way of behaving is as good as any other and that the man who stands apart by reason of his dignity, restraint, and discernment is somehow an Enemy of the People

a gentleman today—however we may characterize him—may find his environment less congenial to his temperament.

Societal civility is the extension and expansion of individual gallantry: it's all about—or ought to be about—balance and restraint

human rights" cannot serve as a stable, shared basis for morality in a society riven by fundamental disagreement about what "human" means, as is apparent from the abortion debate.

almost every technology that has connected people who live apart has also created new barriers between people who live close together.

comes to my door. Mr. Mayor now. Got the suit, with the American flag in the lapel. Don't join the military; don't help out the little guy; don't take in your tired, your poor, your huddled masses—but if you wear a little flag, you're a patriot.

Got the suit, with the American flag in the lapel. Don't join the military; don't help out the little guy; don't take in your tired, your poor, your huddled masses—but if you wear a little flag, you're a patriot.

Hands in plain view approaching a high school. What a world.

We as a society have many prejudices, but there are very few of our fellow citizens we stigmatize and judge less charitably than what we consider to be "large" women.

read a quote recently from Werner Herzog. You know who he is?" "The German film director." "Right. He said that America was waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that one-third of our people will kill one-third of our people while one-third of our people watches.

Win. He was often described in the society pages as an "international playboy," and she guessed that fit. He was blue-blooded old money, very old money, the kind of old money that disembarked from the Mayflower and immediately called for a caddy and a tee time.

Most people understand on some level that there are a lot of surveillance cameras out there, but very few people really get it. There are forty million surveillance cameras in the United States alone and the number keeps growing. You never go through a day without being recorded.

Later, Simon would claim he felt the danger before it all went wrong. There may indeed be something primal in human beings, some survival mechanism from our caveman days of constant danger that lies dormant in modern man, some sixth sense or instinct that almost never needs to surface in our society, but it's still there, still potent yet latent in a deep part of our genetic makeup.

You're a nonconformist." "That didn't used to be a felony." "It is now. Live in the world around you.

There are forces in the world today, Mr. Winsocki, that are invisibly working to make us all carbon copies of one another. Forces that crush us into molds of each other. You walk down the street and never see anyone's face, really. You sit faceless in a movie, or hidden from sight in a dreary living room watching television. When you pay bills, or car fares or talk to people, they see the job they're doing, but never you.

The English are slightly more civilized than anyone else has yet been. Also England is a good country for introverts; they have a place in society for the introvert, which the United States has not.

Too many of our insanities are tolerated because they are harmless on an individual level—but multiply them by a millionfold and you have a nation that is culturally sick. These things stem from each individual's conception of himself—which he arbitrarily assumes to be the nature of the world as well. These conceptions are haphazardly picked up during youth—along with all of the other opinions, neuroses, hangups and etceteras common to the human animal.

Also England is a good country for introverts; they have a place in society for the introvert, which the United States has not.

And John Hersey in The Child Buyer; and Only Lovers Left Alive, flawed as it was;

That's what happens, friends. It gets so damned depressing, coming up against the cultural hari-kiri we keep committing, that cynicism becomes the only supportable attitude. And then the kids prove they've got it. Even I, anxious to give them every possible point, begin to suspect the rot goes from top to bottom, young and old alike. And then the kids do me in. They come up with solid gold, and make me feel like the idiot I certainly am, on occasion.

In allen Schichten war er bekannt, bis tief hinein in das Herz der Gesellschaft, aber die wirklich wichtigen Reaktionen wurden hoch oben und tief unten ausgelöst. Bei den Gewinnern und bei den Verlierern.

There are indeed millions of Christians in the United States, but most Americans who think that they are Christians truly are something else, intensely religious but devout in the American Religion, a faith that is old among us, and that comes in many guises and disguises, and that overdetermines much of our national life.