Quotes About Society

Flaubert] didn't just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together.

WHORES. Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius.

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.

When we killed – or exiled – God, we also killed ourselves. Did we notice that sufficiently at the time? No God, no afterlife, no us. We were right to kill Him, of course, this long-standing imaginary friend of ours. And we weren't going to get an afterlife anyway. But we sawed off the branch we were sitting on. And the view from there, from that height – even if it was only the illusion of a view – wasn't so bad.

Adrian's fragment also refers to the question of responsibility: whether there's a chain of it, or whether we draw the concept more narrowly. I'm all for drawing it narrowly. Sorry, no, you can't blame your dead parents, or having brothers and sisters, or not having them, or your genes, or society, or whatever - not in normal circumstances. Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary.

in this country shadings of class resist time longer than differentials in age

At times, I suspect that the concept of maturity is maintained by a conspiracy of niceness.

None of this, of course, was ever stated: the genteel social Darwinism of the English middle classes always remained implicit.

From time to time, I open a newspaper. Things seem to be proceeding at a dizzy rate. We are dancing not on the edge of a volcano, but on the wooden seat of a latrine, and it seems to me more than a touch rotten. Soon society will go plummeting down and drown in nineteen centuries of shit. There'll be quite a lot of shouting.

The law, and society, and religion all said it was impossible to be sane, healthy, and kill yourself.

To die from 'a draining away of one's strength caused by extreme old age' was in Montaigne's day a 'rare, singular and extraordinary death.' Nowadays we assume it as our right.

Why does anything left-wing have to be trendy before it's read, and by the time it's trendy it's already a force for conservatism?

The work of art is a pyramid which stands in the desert, uselessly: jackals piss at the base of it, and bourgeois clamber to the top of it;

Louise Colet was a proto-feminist who committed the sin of wanting to make someone else happy.

Once, we were talking about public reaction to some political scandal, and I suggested that it was normal for people to need someone to blame. 'Normal doesn't mean it's a good idea,' she answered.

Gradually, he didn't doubt, the world would calm down into a gigantic welfare state devoted to sporting, cultural and sexual exchange, with the accepted international currency being items of hifi equipment.

Freedom consists of conforming to the will of the majority.

I think a great book—leaving aside other qualities such as narrative power, characterization, style, and so on—is a book that describes the world in a way that has not been done before; and that is recognized by those who read it as telling new truths—about society or the way in which emotional lives are led, or both—such truths having not been previously available, certainly not from official records or government documents, or from journalism or television.

And secondly, reducing the diversity between people didn't result in harmony within. The narcissism of small differences ensured this.

d) (1850) «De vez en cuando, en las ciudades, abro un periódico. Tengo la sensación de que todo avanza rápidamente. No estamos bailando sobre un volcán, sino sobre las tablas de una letrina, que a mí me huele bastante a podrido. Próximamente, la sociedad se precipitará en la mierda de diecinueve siglos, y se ahogará rápidamente en ella. Se oirán muchos gritos.»

To be a stoic in an age of self-pity is to be judged standoffish; worse, unfeeling.

mayor sueño de la democracia consiste en elevar al proletariado hasta el nivel de estupidez de la burguesía», escribió Flaubert.

In the old days, a child might pay for the sins of the father, or indeed mother. Nowadays, in the most advanced society on earth, the parents might pay for the sins of the child, along with uncles, aunts, cousins, in-laws, colleagues, friends, and even the man who unthinkingly smiled at you as he came out of the lift at three in the morning. The system of retribution had been greatly improved, and was so much more inclusive than it used to be.

1850) 'From time to time, I open a newspaper. Things seem to be proceeding at a dizzy rate. We are dancing not on the edge of a volcano, but on the wooden seat of a latrine, and it seems to me more than a touch rotten. Soon society will go plummeting down and drown in nineteen centuries of shit. There'll be quite a lot of shouting.