Quotes About Society

I like the rules; following them proves to me that I'm a civilized man.

When a woman forgets that she's supposed to be pretty and on display she looks like that murdered girl did, just somebody who's tired and needs to rest.

Certain issues are not yet clear about the final shape of society in America. Some form of co-existence with whites is the desired goal of virtually all black leaders, but it must be a society which blacks have a hand in shaping, and blacks should have power commensurate with their numbers and contribution to US development. To get that, they have to fight.

Violence in the American situation is inescapable. White society is violent, white American society is particularly violent, and white American society is especially violent towards blacks.

there can, we think, be little doubt of the proposition, that the external organs may, from various causes, become so much deranged as to make false representations to the mind; and that, in such cases, men, in the literal sense, really see the empty and false forms and hear the ideal sounds which, in a more primitive state of society, are naturally enough referred to the action of demons or disembodied spirits.

we resign to civil society our natural rights of self-defence only on condition that the ordinances of law should protect us.

The gay world has been kept in hot water lately by the impudent publication of the celebrated Harriet Wilson, — — from earliest possibility, I suppose, who lived with half the gay world at hack and manger, and now obliges such as will not pay hushmoney with a history of whatever she

mercy to a criminal may be gross injustice to the community.

In civilised society law is the chimney through which all that smoke discharges itself that used to circulate through the whole house

It would be a great step toward a truly civil society if we understood that our public discourse isn't based on "hard facts," that all our wisdom is finite, and that nobody's opinion (not even yours or mine) is the final word.

It's class warfare; my class is winning, but they shouldn't be.

You must remember that the common criminal will always join the armed forces for, if nothing else, regular meals and expert training in the use of guns.

If contemporary literary fiction doesn't read a bit like science fiction then it's probably not all that contemporary, is it

When I got the tattoo, I knew I was drawing a crooked line between myself and society.

Cos a cop asking a guy for a discount on his crack, that's screwed up. Sign of the goddamn apocalypse is what it is.

When women hold off from marrying men, we call it independence. When men hold off from marrying women, we call it fear of commitment.

And if your son is unemployed? Three out of four women say they would not date an unemployed man. In contrast, for two-thirds of men, dating an unemployed woman is a nonissue.

Women do not enter a profession in significant numbers until it is physically safe. So until we care enough about men's safety to turn the death professions into safe professions, we in effect discriminate against women.

The thing I got to thinking about,' he said, 'is--what are the conditions that lead to larger portions of society being generous, humble, and selfless? While we have the conditions for economic opportunity here--and that is a blessing--do we have the conditions to learn how to self-regulate our own passions for the good of the whole?

Sören Kierkegaard wrote, "Once you label me, you negate me." When the individual must live up to the label, the self ceases to exist. The same is true of self-labels. You could be negating yourself by identifying with your trademarks, rather than your own potential for growth.

you've been raised in a culture that not only eschews silence, but is terrified of it.

The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life.

We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence have debased work until it is only fit to escape from. We have debased the products of work and have been, in turn, debased by them. (pg. 43, The Unsettling of America)

One of the strongest of contemporary conventions is that of comparing to Thoreau every writer who has been as far out of the house as the mailbox.