Quotes About Society

There are two core doctrines in economics," Offer said. "One is individual self-interest. The other is the invisible hand, the idea that the pursuit of individual self-interest aggregates or builds up for the good of society as a whole. This is a logical proposition that has never been proven.

The outcome depends on how successful the cheating is. And one of the consequences of this is that economists are not in a strong position to tell society what to do.

But once violence is added to the mix, whether to defend the state or destroy it, something poisonous and insidious takes place. Violence is directed against society not to convert but to eradicate. All aspects of civic life are targeted—political, religious, educational, familial, economic, and traditional.

Trump and today's Republican Party represent the last stage in the emergence of corporate totalitarianism.

The important point that Benjamin and Kant make is that revolutions, whether in art or in society, are about emotion. These moments engender not simply new ideas but new feelings about established power and human possibilities.

My poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of happiness—when these things can be said," wrote Paine, "then may that country boast of its constitution and its government."30

We have the facade of a functioning capitalist democracy but underneath it is a species of corporate totalitarianism.

Daniel Boorstin in The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America

When life is not worth living, everything becomes a pretext for ridding ourselves of it. . . . There is a collective mood, as there is an individual mood, that inclines nations to sadness. . . . For individuals are too closely involved in the life of society for it to be sick without their being affected. Its suffering inevitably becomes theirs. ÉMILE DURKHEIM, On Suicide1

The popularization of culture often ends in its total degradation.

The heroes of war and the heroes of sport are indistinguishable in militarized societies. War is sold to a gullible public as a noble game... War is not a sport. It is about killing. It is dirty, messy, and deeply demoralizing. The pay is lousy. The working conditions are horrific. And those who come back from war are usually discarded.

The government made no attempt to raise the magnitude of revenues that would have been necessary to rebuild a welfare state, for example, or to hike investment in health and education.

There was no stopping us now. We had running water, a heater, a cooker and a road. We were fast becoming slaves again to all the things we had come to this benighted spot to flee.

Still, far too often girls are given the message that their bodies, their lives, and their femaleness must be apologized for. Have you noticed how often women apologize?

What an expression of relief, my dear fiancée. However did you make your way through London society with such a revealing face? Not that I object, you understand. Leaning toward her, Mr. Knight smiled with the kind of intimate bewitchment that made her swallow to relieve her suddenly dry mouth. When a woman is as beautiful as you are, she's usually adept at hiding her emotions. With you, I'll always know what gives you pleasure, and strive always to do as you wish.

Yes, I'm a man and everyone knows men are great hairy beasts scarcely tamed by civilization -Jermyn, Duke of Northcliff to Amy, Princess Beaumontaigne

She snapped out, Why is it that if there are many children, the man is potent, but if the marriage is childless, the woman is infertile?

When he spoke, it was almost poetry and much too much truth—two sins the ton would not easily forgive.

When we are born, we are studied, and deviations, if noxious to the species, are suppressed; good deviations are preserved. And furthermore, we bear our formula on our arm band!

every man there had been trained from childhood in the brutal schools, as assassins. They were all looking for a new life and trying to figure out the rules of society. They knew they'd never fit perfectly, but they were doing their best.

So we've gone from 'Don't trust anyone over thirty' to 'Don't drink any Scotch under thirty'? Is this what's become of your revolution?

We no longer whip people through the streets. Instead we send them to executive-level open jails for a few months' R&R before they hire PR teams to restore their reputations. Fraud, perjury, perverting the course of justice count as nothing

The urban middle class destroyed, the working poor exploited, the vulgar rich elevated to eminence, the underclass demonised, the wasteland of celebrity held in veneration.

Agatha Christie's tales were aggressively anti-intellectual and crueller for it; hers was a world where confirmed bachelors committed suicide out of shame.