Quotes About Society

The idea of the "job" as the answer to all woes, individual and social, is one of the most pernicious myths of modern society. It is promoted by politicians, parents, newspaper moralists and leaders of industry, on the left and on the right: paradise, they say, is "full employment.

Worldwide, the mania for consumer goods has created a deadly culture of overwork.

This is possibly what drove Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain to early graves. They could not handle being cogs. They could not handle monetizing their content. That was not the reason they become bohemian singers.

In the West, we have become addicted to work. Americans now work the longest hours in the world. And the result is not health, wealth and wisdom, but rather a lot of anxiety, a lot of ill health and a lot of debt.

as Charles Handy puts it: "It has always seemed to me slightly bizarre that we should queue up to sell our time to someone else. It's a form of slavery, voluntary slavery. We think it's great but it's crazy.

He believes it's time to redesign Evil from the ground up; to face the challenges and opportunities of a diverse, rapidly changing society. "He's thinking of calling it," said Miss Gold, "New Evil.

For in those days it was rare to see a man and a woman, especially a wife and her husband, laughing together in the street. Now, of course, things are very different, and nobody laughs at you or makes faces behind your back if you happen to mention that you are quite fond of your wife. Personally, I blame the modern craze for philosophy and this so-called New Comedy we hear so much about.

humanity generally gets the Gods it deserves.

As was usual in Tilling, the presence of the Wyses curbed the tongued and improved the manner of those around them...A silence generally fell on the company after Mr. Wyse had finished speaking, his language was so fine, so Augustan that it seemed a pity to defile its memory with effusions in the sugar tongue.

efturryd geenuz iz speel iboot whut wuz right nwhut wuz rang boot this nthat nthi nix thing a saytiz thi bloke nwhut izzit yi caw yir joab Jimmy am a liason-co-ordinator hi sayz ah good as sayz a liason-co-ordinator jist whut this erra needs whut way aw thi unimployment inaw thi bevvyin n thi boayz runnin amock n thi hoassyz fawnty bits n thi wummin n tranquilizers it last thiv sent uz a liason-co-ordinator wia degree in fuck knows whut getn peyd fur no known whut thi fuck ti day way it.

Just a dead kid in the park, one more sign that the world had lost its mind.

If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal. This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is full of metaphysical outlaws.

When humans were young, they were pushed around in strollers. When they were old, they were pushed around in wheelchairs. In between, they were just pushed around.

The fact is, what I hated in the Church was what I hated in society. Namely, authoritarians. Power freaks. Rigid dogmatists. Those greedy, underloved, undersexed twits who want to run everything. While the rest of us are busy living - busy tasting and testing and hugging and kissing and goofing and growing - they are busy taking over.

Often, moreover, it is...that aspect of our being that society finds eccentric, ridiculous, or disagreeable, that holds our sweet waters, our secret well of happiness, the key to our equanimity in malevolent climes.

Political activism is seductive because it seems to offer the possibility that one can improve society, make things better, without going through the personal ordeal of rearranging one's perceptions and transforming one's self.

Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem.

Conservatives understand Halloween, liberals only understand Christmas. If you want to control a population, don't give it social services, give it a scary adversary.

Well, Daddy, I used to believe that artists went crazy in the process of creating the beautiful works of art that kept society sane. Nowadays, though, artists make intentionally ugly art that's only supposed to reflect society rather than inspire it. So I guess we're all loony together now, loony rats in the shithouse of commercialism.

If every time we choose a turd, society, at a great expense, simply allows us to redeem it for a pepperoni, then not only will we never learn to make smart choices, we will also surrender the freedom to choose, because a choice without consequences is no choice at all.

Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization.

When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.

Western civilization was declining too fast for comfort, but too slowly to be very exciting.

If it is committed in the name of God or country, there is no crime so heinous that the public will not forgive it.