Quotes About Society

A man hits me--I hit the man a little harder--then he won't do it again.' Unfortunately he did do it again--a little harder still. The effort to hit harder carried on the action and reaction till society, hitting hardest of all, set up a system of legal punishment, of unlimited severity. It imprisoned, it mutilated, it tortured, it killed; it destroyed whole families, and razed contumelious cities to the ground.

This led me very promptly to the conviction that those "feminine charms" we are so fond of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinity—developed to please us because they had to please us, and in no way essential to the real fulfillment of their great process.

Only as we live, think, feel, and work outside the home, do we become humanly developed, civilized, socialized.

In exact proportion as women grow independent, educated, wise and free, do they become less submissive to men-made fashions.

This led me very promptly to the conviction that those "feminine charms" we are so fond of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinity—developed to please us because they had to please us, and in no way essential to the real fulfillment of their great process. But Terry came to no such conclusion.

Our laws as we support them now are slow, wasteful, cumbrous systems, which require a special caste to interpret and another to enforce; wherein the average citizen knows nothing of the law, and cares only to evade it when he can, obey it when he must.

Crime does not decrease in proportion to the severest punishment.

There are many who think in one syllable, who say, 'women don't dress to please men--they dress to please themselves--and to outshine other women.

I don't like to look out of the windows even—there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper, as I did?

The only thing they can think of about a man is Fatherhood!" said Terry in high scorn. "Fatherhood! As if a man was always wanting to be a father!

What Diantha Did was first published in serialised form in Gilman's magazine The Forerunner between late 1909 and October 1910.

It took some time to make clear to those three sweet-faced women the process which robs the cow of her calf, and the calf of its true food; and the talk led us to further discussion of the meat business. They heard it out, looking very white, and presently begged to be excused.

O que me levou à convicção de que os "charmes femininos" que apreciamos não são nada femininos, mas apenas reflexos da masculinidade — desenvolvidos para nos agradar porque elas precisam nos agradar —, nem um pouco essenciais ao desempenho.

They were inconveniently reasonable, those women.

It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.

In a sick society, women who have difficulty fitting in are not ill but demonstrating a healthy and positive response.

Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able, - to dress and entertain, and order things

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.

This is the woman's century, the first chance for the mother of the world to rise to her full place . . . and the world waits while she powders her nose.

Would it be said they were abandoned or taken, the way people said a girl was attacked, a woman was raped, this femaleness always at the centre, as if womanhood itself were the cause of these things? As if the girls somehow, through the natural way of things, did it to themselves.

I usually quite like women, but this advert makes me want to kill about 900 of them with my bare hands. It ends with the tiresome ladettes marching down a high street triumphantly singing the Here Come the Girls song out loud, like an invading squadron tormenting the natives with its war cry. Next year they'll probably be armed. Fear this.

Society mends its wounds. And that's invariably true in all the tragedies, in the comedies as well. And certainly in the histories.

The future belongs to the people, and gradually, or in one strike, they will take power, here and in every country.                   The terrible thing is the people need to be educated, and this they cannot do before taking power, only after. They can only learn at the cost of their own mistakes, which will be very serious and will cost many innocent lives.

In the tran­sition to socialism, man "starts to see himself reflected in his work and to understand his full stature as a human being through the object created, through the work accomplished. Work no longer entails surrendering a part of his being in the form of labor power sold, which no longer belongs to him, but represents an expression and extension of himself, a contribution to the common social exist­ence in which he is reflected.