Quotes About Society

The ideal capitalism envisioned by advocates of the free market depends upon social virtues and wise policies that it does not itself generate.

The politics of inevitability is an intellectual coma we put ourselves in.

the less popular of the two parties controls every lever of power at the federal level, as well as the majority of statehouses. The party that exercises such control proposes few policies that are popular with the society at large, and several that are generally unpopular—and thus must either fear democracy or weaken it.

Generic cynicism makes us feel hip and alternative even as we slip along with our fellow citizens into a morass of indifference.

We certainly face, as did the ancient Greeks, the problem of oligarchy—ever more threatening as globalization increases differences in wealth.

Other forces were at work besides conformism. But without the conformists, the great atrocities would have been impossible.

He places the sign in his window so that he can withdraw into daily life without trouble from the authorities. When everyone else follows the same logic, the public sphere is covered with signs of loyalty, and resistance becomes unthinkable.

It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society. The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds. The leader who dislikes the investigators is a potential tyrant.

that human nature is such that American democracy must be defended from Americans who would exploit its freedoms to bring about its end.

It is derision that is mainstream and easy, and actual journalism that is edgy and difficult.

Be wary of paramilitaries.

Generic cynicism makes us feel hip and alternative even as we slip along with our fellow citizens into a morass of indifference. It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society. The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds. The leader who dislikes the investigators is a potential tyrant. During

the view of many reasonable people in 1933, just as it is the view of many reasonable people now.

Totalitarianism removes the difference between private and public not just to make individuals unfree, but also to draw the whole society away from normal politics and toward conspiracy theories. Rather than defining facts or generating interpretations, we are seduced by the notion of hidden realities and dark

a man can be human only under human conditions." The purpose of the state is to preserve these conditions, so that its citizens need not see personal survival as their only goal.

It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society. The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds. The leader who dislikes the investigators is a potential tyrant. During

It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well.

The politics of inevitability is a self-induced intellectual coma.

Watching televised news is sometimes little more than looking at someone who is also looking at a picture. We take this collective trance to be normal. We have slowly fallen into it.

When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework.

Most the power of authoritarianism is freely given.

they knew, Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability,

Communication among citizens depends upon equality. At the same time, equality cannot be achieved without facts.

The myth of their total responsibility arose during postwar trials in the Federal Republic of Germany as a way to protect the majority of German killers and isolate the killing from German society as such.