Quotes About Society

Society doesn't evolve by consensus, voting, majority, committees, verbose meetings, academic conferences, tea and cucumber sandwiches, or polling; only a few people suffice to disproportionately move the needle. All one needs is an asymmetric rule somewhere—and someone with soul in the game. And asymmetry is present in about everything.

If both the positive and the negative consequences of an action fell on its author, our learning would be fast. But often an action's positive consequences benefit only its author, since they are visible, while the negative consequences, being invisible, apply to others, with a net cost to society.

The number of cultured people dropped below some critical level. Suddenly the place became a vacuum. Brain drain is hard to reverse, and some of the old refinement may be lost forever.

But we have evidence that collectively society doesn't advance with organized education, rather the reverse: the level of (formal) education in a country is the result of wealth.*2

Luck is far more egalitarian than even intelligence. If people were rewarded strictly according to their abilities, things would still be unfair—people don't choose their abilities. Randomness has the beneficial effect of reshuffling society's cards, knocking down the big guy.

In order to progress, modern society should be treating ruined entrepreneurs in the same way we honor dead soldiers, perhaps not with as much honor, but using exactly the same logic (the entrepreneur is still alive, though perhaps morally broken and socially stigmatized

had no name for the color blue but managed rather well without it—we stayed for a long part of our history culturally, not biologically, color blind.

Which brings us to the largest fragilizer of society, and greatest generator of crises, absence of "skin in the game." Some become antifragile at the expense of others by getting the upside (or gains) from volatility, variations, and disorder and exposing others to the downside risks of losses or harm.

What Erasmus called ingratitudo vulgi, the ingratitude of the masses, is increasing in the age of globalization and the Internet.

This visible tension between individual and collective interests is new in history…

And many of the problems of society come from the argument "other people are doing it.

many problems in society come from the interventions of people who sell complicated solutions because that's what their position and training invite them

many problems in society come from the interventions of people who sell complicated solutions because that's what their position and training invite them to do.

A história mostra que, para a sociedade, quanto mais ricos nos tornamos, mais difícil é viver dentro de nossas próprias posses. Temos mais dificuldade em lidar com a abundância do que com a escassez.

The British government documents, as early as fifty years ago, an aim for education other than the one we have today: raising values, making good citizens, and "learning," not economic growth (they were not suckers at the time)—a point also made by Alison Wolf.

We saw the trade-off between the interests of the collective and those of the individual.

perhaps morally broken and socially stigmatized

There is no penalty for opinion makers who harm society.

Anyone who causes harm by forecasting should be treated as either a fool or a lier. Some forecasters cause more damage to society than criminals.

Never have people who talk and don't do been more visible, and played a larger role, than in modern times.

The way to make society more equal is by forcing (through skin in the game) the rich to be subjected to the risk of exiting from the 1 percent.

This absence of penalty makes them antifragile at the expense of the society

so the gains in life expectancy are more societal than from the result of scientific advance.

are supposedly underpaid because of their emotional reward from serving society.