Quotes About Society

The whole dream of democracy,' he wrote, 'is to raise the proletariat to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeoisie.

He remembered, at school, being guided by masters through books and plays in which there was often a Conflict between Love and Duty. In those old stories, innocent but passionate love would run up against the duty owed to family, church, king, state. Some protagonists won, some lost, some did both at the same time; usually, tragedy ensued. No doubt in religious, patriarchal, hierarchical societies, such conflicts continued and still gave themes to writers.

Nowadays we talk about transactional sex, and recreational sex. No one, back then, had recreational sex. Well, they might have done, but they didn't call it that. Back then, back there, there was love, and there was sex, and there was a commingling of the two, sometimes awkward, sometimes seamless, which sometimes worked out, and sometimes didn't.

All political and social systems appeared to us corrupt, yet we declined to consider an alternative other than hedonistic chaos.

L'arte appartiene a tutti e a nessuno. L'arte appartiene a tutti i tempi e a nessun tempo in particolare. L'arte appartiene a chi la produce e a chi l'assapora. L'arte non appartiene più al Popolo e al Partito di quanto una volta non appartenesse all'aristocrazia e ai mecenati. L'arte è il mormorio della storia, udibile al di là del rumore del tempo. L'arte non esiste per sé: esiste per il pubblico.

But people don't on the whole fart raucously in Mozart [concerts]. So I suppose a few vestiges of the thin crust of civilization which prevents our descent into utter barbarism are just about holding. ~Vigilance, by Julian Barnes

In the States, the Abdication story, for example, is portrayed as The World Well Lost For Love while the English, of a certain type anyway, see it only as childish, irresponsible and absurd.

She had that absolute faith in the judgement of her own kind, seldom seen since 1914. No doubt it was common enough before then, which must have made Edwardian society such a philosophically relaxing place to be. If one were an aristocrat.

Sybil, vulgarity is no substitute for wit.

Language too is a brake upon social change.

Governments, as we have seen, look to art as a social salve, and hope that socially interactive art will act as bandaging for the grave wounds continually prised open by capital.

My memories will be erased and then I'll be force-fed the story from the society pages?

imagine the ton would leap from London Bridge if the marquess did it first. Mind you, he'd land on a cart carrying a feather mattress when he did it, whilst the rest of London would splatter.

Plain girls who were also clever were a ha'pence a dozen.

Do the girls emerge quite ruined for marriage after you stuff them full of knowledge? I should imagine most of our girls emerge less tolerant of fools, if that's what you mean. - Dryden and Phoebe

Perhaps men like the Everseas were commonplace here in England. Perhaps finding a beautiful titled husband would be as simple as shaking an apple from a tree.

Fallen woman. The term made a sort of poetic sense. Once the fall started, it seemed it never stopped.

After all, "justice" was really another word for commerce, something every man at the mercy of it eventually learns.

An english baron wed to my daughter? I'll die first, I will. Johanna quit rubbing Claire's shoulder and stepped forward. A very rich baron, she blurted out. The laird frowned at Johanna with what she thought was indignation. Wealth is not an issue here, he muttered. How rich? They were married an hour later.

Criminals are getting younger and dumber

In the meantime, I hope you will not consign her to a windowless environment populated entirely by unsocialized clones who long ago abandoned the reading and discussion of literature in favor of creating ever more restrictive and meaningless ways in which humans are intended to make themselves known to one another.

My daughter, I said blankly. I see. Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought it took a man, as well as a woman, to make a child. Is this infant's father to be a crab, or a seagull maybe? Or were you planning to shipwreck some likely sailor on my doorstep, so I can make convenient use of him?

Bran dissera, uma vez, que a confiança era um conceito sem qualquer significado. Mas, se não podíamos confiar, ficávamos sós, porque nem a amizade, nem a sociedade, nem a família, nem a aliança, podiam existir sem confiança. Sem ela ficávamos dispersos, à mercê dos quatro ventos, sem nada a que nos agarrarmos.

The best and most authentic reaction against feminism and against every other female aberration should not be aimed at women as such, but at men instead. It should not be expected of women that they return to what they really are and thus reestablish the necessary inner and outer conditions for a reintegration of a superior race, when men themselves retain only the semblance of true virility.