Quotes About Society

Every society has its own problems, Morrie said, lifting his eyebrows, the closest he could come to a shrug. The way to do it, I think, isn't to run away. You have to work at creating your own culture.

America had become a Persian bazaar of self-help. But there still seemed to be no clear answers.

There is a specific dimension of the uncanny that emerges with modernity… in premodern societies the dimension of the uncanny was largely covered (and veiled) by the area of the sacred and untouchable… With the triumph of the Enlightenment, this privileged and excluded (the exclusion that founded society) was no more. That is to say that the uncanny became unplaceable; it became uncanny in the strict sense.

status, as in any traditional, class-conscious society, declines more slowly than wealth.

It seemed to me then—and to be honest, sir, seems to me still—that America was engaged only in posturing. As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority…. Such an America had to be stopped in the interests not only in the rest of humanity, but also in your own.

Our civilizations do not cause us to clash. No, our clashing allows us to pretend we belong to civilizations.

People don't believe in consequences anymore.

If you don't pray," he said, lowering his voice, "why do you wear it?" They were sitting at a table for two by a window, overlooking snarled traffic on the street below. Their phones rested screens-down between them, like the weapons of desperadoes at a parley. She smiled. Took a sip. And spoke, the lower half of her face obscured by her cup. "So men don't fuck with me," she said.

Your teacher did not want to be a teacher. He wanted to be a meter reader at the electric utility. Meter readers do not have to put up with children, work comparatively little, and what is more important, have greater opportunity for corruption and are hence both better off and held in higher regard by society.

he wondered if this new way of speaking to one another, this unkindness that was now creeping into their words from time to time, was a sign of where they were headed.

These artists of war are active even when their societies are officially at peace, quests for power being unrelenting, and in the absence of open hostilities they can be found either hunting for ever-present enemies within or otherwise divvying up that booty always conveniently proximate to those capable of wanton slaughter, spoils these days often cloaked in purchasing contracts and share-price movements.

It's all very well to run around saying regulation is bad, get the government off our backs, etc. Of course our lives are regulated. When you come to a stop sign, you stop; if you want to go fishing, you get a license; if you want to shoot ducks, you can shoot only three ducks. The alternative is dead bodies at the intersection, no fish, and no ducks. OK? ( Getting Control of the Frontier , Gainsville Sun, March 22, 1995)

Women are not wrong at all when they reject the rules of life that have been introduced into the world, inasmuch as it is the men who have made these without them. There is a natural plotting and scheming between them and us.

If you doubt for a moment that there is a "vast, right-wing conspiracy" in this country, you must be living on another planet.74

Mathematics is one of the major modern mysteries. Perhaps it is the leading one, occupying a place in our society similar to the religious mysteries of another age. If we want to know something about what our age is all about, we should have some understanding of what mathematics is, and of how the mathematician operates and thinks.

If one could enumerate all the essentials which a sound educational program consider, I would say that the techniques of communication, which make for literacy, are our first obligation, and more so in a cemocracy than in any other kind of society, because it depends on a literate electorate.

You have become acquainted with the characters. You have joined them in the imaginary world wherein they dwell, consented to the laws of their society, breathed its air, tasted its food, traveled its highways. Now you must follow them through their adventures.

Há uma sensação, hoje em dia, de que temos acesso a muitos fatos, mas não necessariamente ao entendimento desses fatos . Uma das causas dessa situação é que a própria mídia é projetada para tornar o pensamento algo desnecessário - embora, é claro, isso seja apenas mera impressão.

Human beings don't necessarily exist inside of (or correspond to) the neat racial, gendered or national boxes into which we often unthinkingly place them. It's a mistake to ask literature to reinforce such structures. Literature tends to crack them. Literature is where we free ourselves.

Any system that permits its children to be killed with impunity would seem to be a system in dire crisis. Something at the very core of our system—and society—is irrevocably broken and must be fixed.

Phil pursed his lips over his fangs. Are you in league with Public Works, do you have any history with zoëtism, fortune telling, or anyone in coterie society? -Does a fing look swart to the zooloofills? Phil stared at her blankly. I have no idea-- -Exactly, she interrupted. 'I don't know what you're talking about either.

the whole purpose of civilization is to take the surprises out of life, so one can be bored to death

The hearts of the rich are hardened. The existence of the poor is a reproach to them. But

The mentoring of children and adolescents by people who themselves know in some way their own wholeness, and can thus recognize the beauty and wholeness in others, is the sacred responsibility of the adults in any healthy society.