Quotes About Society

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.

As a political movement, feminism seeks to transform society by challenging and changing social institutions. Religion, on the other hand, seeks first to transform individuals through a personal relationship with God, which then results in a desire to work for the transformation of society.

While Lucretia [Mott]'s public life was inspirational, I also want to to discuss her private life: her quiet actions. I agree with Lucretia's ethic that private acts of integrity are the foundation of a more just and more equitable society. She taught us that small moments of love in action can add up to potent agents of change.

Whatever else can be said about sex, it cannot be called a dignified performance.

Feminism has to fight 'the tyranny of niceness'. It is, and has always been, one of the most potent forces holding women back.

We need to change our idea of what 'work' is. Work is not what creates value for an employer. It's what creates a society. It's what takes up your time.

The women's movement doesn't hate men. It hates patriarchy – a system created and supported by all of us, where men and women are legally, financially and socially unequal.

the story of gendered time is not one of beastly oppressive men and poor downtrodden women. It's a story of cultural scripts which we all follow without thinking.

I had only just escaped from humanity,' White wrote, 'and the poor gos had only just been caught by it.

It was important for a Roman of this period to get his Greek mythology right. Being able to identify who was who and what was what was a sign that the viewer was a person of culture and status.

The diet industry is built upon an ideology of racial, as well as gender, prejudice.20

As British writer Gordon Burn wrote in Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son (one of the very few good books written about serial killers),

cities are fueled by the listless agony of workers providing services to other workers who barely acknowledge those services.

Most of the people who say beauty fades say it with a smirk. Fading is more than just expected, it's what they want to see. I don't.

She wants to see good hearts and good brains put to proper use, but I'm not convinced that everybody ought to live like that, or even that everybody can.

A house of stone and glass and iron should be stark and sober, a watchtower from which a benevolent guard is kept on society. But the white stone of this particular house rippled as if reacting to a hand that had found its most pleasurable contact. A notable newspaper critic had described this effect as being that of "a pernicious sensuality." And if that wasn't enough, the entire construction blushed a truly disgraceful peachy-pink at sunset and dawn.

A house of stone and glass and iron should be stark and sober, a watchtower from which a benevolent guard is kept over society. But the white stone of this particular house rippled as if reacting to a hand that had found its most pleasurable point of contact.

Of course this is a mind-set that a nation can be stunned into. All you need is a century or two of freedoms and strictures that appear and disappear between one year and the next, words and deeds that were frowned upon just yesterday receiving vehement acclaim today

They were merchant families, mostly, descendants of Englishmen who'd gotten rich trading with the tsars and sultans and rajahs of long ago, then come over to America because all their money didn't stop the aristocrats from snubbing them. Now their great-grandchildren just made a few investments here and there and kept charitable institutions the way an average Joe keeps a pet.

And when Ambrose thought it over, it began to seem that really had been his subconscious project. Especially after he'd made contact with citizens of various countries who said they were Druhástranians. They all turned out to be people whose Druhástranianism was a nonviolent product of their alienation from every society currently known to them.

So everybody lives the way they're told to. The way they have to. Everybody most of the time. Not ever all the time. Hair style, clothing, manner of speech, ideas, cars, houses, and everything. Just like they have to. Even the way we walk. But not all the time. Comes a time when everybody breaks out. And that's the only characteristic of human nature I know of. Not greed, not obedience, not violence, nor any of those things the capitalists would have us believe are intrinsic. Only rebellion.

I like driving cab. Receptionists, sales clerks, waitresses -- they all have to look pleasant all the time. I can snarl if I want. There ain't too many women who can do that. Maybe garment workers are allowed to snarl at their sewing machines. But women mostly have to look pleasant when they're fucking miserable, and smile when they're angry.

A society that is unable to convince individuals of its ability to exact atonement for injury is a society that runs a constant risk of having its members revert to the wilder forms of [vigilante] justice Ã¢â'¬Â¦

Thoreau: "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.