Quotes About Society

The trouble with this country," he said, "is that the women have no guts.They'd rather slink off and have a dangerous, illegal operation performed than change the laws. The legislators are all men, and men don't bear babies; they can afford to be moralistic.

In a mass-media world, there's less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That's disappearing faster than trees.

Because raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It's the most important thing that happens, and it's the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved.

The kids I see are lazy. Nobody wants to work. I teach physics. It takes years to master. But all the kids want to dress like Charlie Sheen and make a million dollars before they're twenty-eight. The only way you can make that kind of money is in law, investment banking, Wall Street. Places where the game is paper profits, something for nothing. But that's what the kids want to do, these days.

the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.

Dr. Malcolm," Hammond explained, "is a man of strong opinions." "And mad as a hatter," Malcolm said cheerfully. "But you must admit, these are nontrivial issues. We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you will care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn't it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.

We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you will care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn't it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.

Actualmente mucha gente piensa que vivimos en un mundo predeterminado que sigue un derrotero fijo y establecido. Las decisiones pasadas nos han legado la polución, la despersonalización y la suciedad urbana; alguien decidió por nosotros y ahora nos enfrentamos a las consecuencias.

We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn't it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.

It seemed to him that a society in which the most common prescription drug was Valium was, by definition, a society with unsolved problems.

And of course we know that social control is best managed through fear.

ordinary Western urban man still clings to the belief that crime results from poverty, injustice, and poor education.

for the last fifteen years we have been under the control of an entirely new complex, far more powerful and far more pervasive. I call it the politico-legal-media complex. The PLM. And

Isn't it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.

Because raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place.

But you must admit, these are nontrivial issues. We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you will care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn't it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.

The purpose of history is to explain the present—to say why the world around us is the way it is. History tells us what is important in our world, and how it came to be. It tells us why the things we value are the things we should value. And it tells us what is to be ignored, or discarded. That is true power—profound power. The power to define a whole society.

But the truth was that the Plains Indian society that Westerners saw was hardly older than the white American nation that now threatened its existence. The Plains Indians were a nomadic hunting society organized around the horse, as were the Mongols of Asia. Yet there had been no horses in America until the Spaniards introduced them three hundred years earlier, changing Plains Indian society beyond recognition.

Ma bisogna ammettere che queste non sono questioni banali. Viviamo in un mondo pieno di orride convenzioni. Si dà per scontato che ci si debba comportare in un determinato modo, che ci si debba curare di determinate cose. Nessuno pensa alle convenzioni di base. Non è straordinario? Nella società dell'informazione, nessuno pensa. Eravamo convinti che avremmo abolito la carta, ma in realtà abbiamo abolito il pensiero.»

CivilizaÈ›ia nu ne ÎNDEPÄ'RTEAZÄ' de natur?. CivilizaÈ›ia ne PROTEJEAZÄ' de natur?.

There is a peculiar neo-Stalinist mode of thought that is required to support all this, and it can thrive only in a restrictive setting, behind closed doors, without due process. In our society, only universities have created that—so far. The notion that these institutions are liberal is a cruel joke. They are fascist to the core, I'm telling you.

was reinforced by her education, and many well-bred women probably were the simpering, tittering, pathologically delicate fools that populate the pages of Victorian novels.

It's not clear what happened. It's not clear who did what to whom. That's the largest category of complaints we see. So far, society's tended to focus on the problems of the victim, not the problems of the accused. But the accused has problems, too. A harassment claim is a weapon, Bob, and there are no good defenses against it. Anybody can use the weapon—and lots of good people have. It's going to continue for a while, I think." Garvin

the PLM is powerful and stable, precisely because it unites so many institutions of society.