Quotes About Society

Other people were so unsuccessful at fending off love! Members of Congress who had affairs with their aides, or students who I'd known in college, girls who as freshmen declared themselves lesbians, then graduated with boyfriends- to give in to such love represents, for them, a capitulation or a betrayal, yet apparently the pull was so strong that they couldn't resist. That was what I didn't understand, how people made the leap from not mattering in each others' lives to mattering.

Curtis Sittenfeld

He didn't put it in these terms, and I'm not even sure if he knew this was what he was saying, but his message was: Act like a guy. It was a message that turned out to be invaluable.

A dystopian story must not merely be dystopian; it must also be a story. Premise can only get you so far.

La società capitalista, ad esempio, è la forma più possibile di cristianesimo. Che senza l'esistenza del male non vi può esser Cristo. Che la società capitalista è fondata su questo sentimento: che senza l'esistenza di esseri che soffrono, non si possa interamente godere dei proprii beni e della propria felicità; che il capitalismo, senza l'alibi del cristianesimo, non potrebbe reggere.

It seemed to her that, except to marry, the women of Trastad feared men, except for their fathers, and brothers; and the fathers, brothers and husbands mistrusted all other men.

Se sentía débil e infinitamente abandonada. Deseaba que algo viniera de fuera en su ayuda. Ayuda que de modo ninguno se presentaba. La sociedad era horrible porque estaba loca. La sociedad civilizada es un despropósito. El dinero y el llamado amor son sus dos grandes manías; con el dinero muy a la cabeza. En su inconexa locura el individuo se identifica a sí mismo con esas dos formas: dinero y amor.

No creo en el mundo, ni en el dinero, ni en el progreso, ni en el futuro de nuestra civilización. Si es que la humanidad tiene un futuro, tendrá que hacerse muy diferente de como es ahora.

The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love. The only unfortunate thing was that men lagged so far behind women in the matter. They insisted on the sex thing like dogs.

It was only a friendship between man and woman, such as any civilized persons might have.

y entró en esa buena sociedad de gente del gobierno que no está a la cabeza, pero que son, o pudieran ser, el verdadero poder oculto de la nación: gente que sabe de qué habla, o habla como si lo supiera.

And who should have the money, indeed, if not your wives? They have everything to do with the money. What idea have you, but to waste it! Women waste nothing--they couldn't if they tried, said Aaron Sisson.

Never was an age more sentimental, more devoid of real feeling, more exaggerated in false feeling, than our own.

Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.

If you could only tell them that living and spending isn't the same thing! But it's no good. If only they were educated to live instead of earn and spend, they could manage very happily...

For God's sake, let us be men not monkeys minding machines or sitting with our tails curled while the machine amuses us, the radio or film or gramophone. Monkeys with a bland grin on our faces.

Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they've got none to spend. That's our civilization and our education: bring up the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the money gives out.

Used to all kinds of society, she watched people as one reads the pages of a novel, with a certain disinterested amusement.

A man could no longer be private and withdrawn. The world allows no hermits.

He went down again into the darkness and seclusion of the wood. But he knew that the seclusion of the wood was illusory. The industrial noises broke the solitude, the sharp lights, though unseen, mocked it. A man could no longer be private and withdrawn. The world allows no hermits.

He knew that conscience was chiefly fear of society or fear of oneself.

The least little bit o' money 'll really do... What have yer done ter yerselves, wi' the blasted work? Spoilt yerselves. No need to work that much. Take yer clothes off an' look at yourselves. Yer ought ter be alive an' beautiful, an' yer ugly an' half dead.

But he was quite consciously afraid of society, which he knew by instinct to be a malevolent, partly insane beast.

But a democracy is bound in the end to be obscene, for it is composed of myriad disunited fragments, each fragment assuming to itself a false wholeness, a false individuality. Modern democracy is made up of millions of frictional parts all asserting their own wholeness.