Quotes About Society

I don't see how the study of language and literature can be separated from the question of free speech, which we all know is fundamental to our society. [p.92]

Liberty is not a license for chaos.

The dumbing down of America is proceeding apace.

We often hear shop-girls spoken of. No such persons exist. There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on Fifth Avenue as marriage-girls.

We were in the main dining-room, and there was a fine-dressed crowd there, all talking loud and enjoyable about the two St. Louis topics, the water supply and the colour line. They mix the two subjects so fast that strangers often think they are discussing water-colours; and that has given the old town something of a rep as an art centre.

And as John F. Kennedy described the ideals behind what would become the Peace Corps, he issued a challenge to the students who had assembled in Ann Arbor on that October night: "on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country," he said, will depend the answer whether a free society can compete. I think it can," he said.

When a society decays, it is language that is first to become gangrenous. As a result, social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings

Therefore the fiesta is not only an excess, a ritual squandering of the goods painfully accumulated during the rest of the year; it is also a revolt, a sudden immersion in the formless, in pure being. By means of the fiesta society frees itself from the norms it has established. It ridicules its gods, its principles, and its laws: it denies its own self.

I do not condemn the cult of pleasure; I lament the general vulgarity.

There can be no society without poetry, but society can never be realized as poetry, it is never poetic. Sometimes the two terms seek to break apart. They cannot.

better to be stoned in the plaza than to turn the mill that squeezes out the juice of life, that turns eternity into empty hours, minutes into prisons, and time into copper coins and abstract shit

La società moderna è ben lontana dal costituire un esempio: molte delle sue manifestazioni - la pubblicità, il culto del denaro, le disuguaglianze abissali, l'egoismo feroce, l'uniformità dei gusti, delle opinioni, delle coscienze - sono un concentrato di orrori e idiozie.

We have no government and no laws, if by law is meant a stereotyped convention supported by force, and not to be altered without the aid of cumbersome machinery.

law grinds the poor, rich men rule the law

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey/Where wealth accumulates and men decay

Olivia Goldsmith

Uma humanidade sem heroísmo é boa para Deus e para o mercado. Alguns contemporâneos, em seu cinismo, parecem não se dar conta disso.

As women we've been programmed to sacrifice everything in the name of what is good and right for everyone else. Then if there's an inch left over, maybe we can have a piece of that. We need to deprogram ourselves.

Clocks and calendars do not exist to remind us of the Time we've forgotten but to regulate our relations with others and indeed all of society, and this is how we use them.

In Europe the rich are refined enough to act as if they're not wealthy. That is how civilized people behave. If you ask me, being cultured and civilized is not about everyone being free and equal; it's about everyone being refined enough to act as if they were. Then no one has to feel guilty.

These were innocent people, so innocent that they thought poverty a crime that wealth would allow them to forget. --- from the notebooks of Celal Salik

We don't need more museums that try to construct the historical narratives of a society, community, team, nation, state, tribe, company, or species. We all know that the ordinary, everyday stories of individuals are riches, more humane, and much more joyful.

Now everyone is prouder and poorer

Por qué nos inquieta un hombre bañado en lágrimas? Una mujer que llora puede considerarse una parte excepcional pero conmovedora y digna de pena, de nuestra vida cotidiana, la acogemos con sinceridad y cariño. Pero ante un hombre que llora nos llena un sentimiento de desesperación. Es como si para él hubiera llegado el fin del mundo o como si él hubiera llegado al límite de lo que podía hacer.