Quotes About Society

the way to get rich was not to create wealth, but to serve a ruler powerful enough to appropriate it. This started to change in Europe with the rise of the middle class.

Now we think of the middle class as people who are neither rich nor poor, but originally they were a distinct group. In a feudal society, there are just two classes: a warrior aristocracy, and the serfs who work their estates. The middle class were a new, third group who lived in towns and supported themselves by manufacturing and trade.

Once it became possible to get rich by creating wealth, society as a whole started to get richer very rapidly. Nearly everything we have was created by the middle class. Indeed, the other two classes have effectively disappeared in industrial societies, and their names been given to either end of the middle class. (In the original sense of the word, Bill Gates is middle class.)

If I had a choice of living in a society where I was materially much better off than I am now, but was among the poorest, or in one where I was the richest, but much worse off than I am now, I'd take the first option. If I had children, it would arguably be immoral not to. It's absolute poverty you want to avoid, not relative poverty. If, as the evidence so far implies, you have to have one or the other in your society, take relative poverty.

Natural selection has a new aspect, one that is psychological denial. Such denial where the "individual benefits as an individual from his ability to deny the truth even though society as a whole, which he is apart, suffers".

He stated emphatically that "Socialism cannot be brought into existence without revolution.

I'm asking you to tap into another set of feelings—understanding and compassion for people of color; outrage at injustice; courage, passion, and commitment to building a democratic, multicultural, and just society. Concentrate on what it is we can do, how we can make a difference.

social democracy"—a market economy, but with a strong public social safety net and regulations that limit the range of actions businesses can take in pursuit of profit.

JP Morgan spelled it out: for neoliberalism to survive, democracy must fade.

la tecnología de la información, lejos de crear una forma nueva y estable de capitalismo, está disolviendo el sistema capitalista en general, porque corroe los mecanismos de mercado, socava los derechos de propiedad y destruye la tradicional relación entre salarios, trabajo y ganancias.

In brief, death control goes with the grain, birth control against it.

We have become a society that strives for the minimum standard, and this is how we live our lives. Failure to put in the desired time and effort will reward you with only middle-of-the-road performance.

Nobody disappears completely anymore. The only thing that's disappeared is privacy, which is never coming back. And which is probably a good thing. Why should anything be private? No hiding, no guilt, no shame. Just a completely transparent world.

But it's not real life. It's just America.

Sayg?nl?k iyiliÄŸin iÅŸareti, ikiyüzlülük ise kötülüÄŸün iÅŸaretiydi.Ä°nsanlar kurallar? bozdular fakat toplum olarak deÄŸil. Sartre ve Beauvoir kural?n d???na ç?km??lard?. Bu, o zamanlar Fransa'da yap?lacak en küstahça ÅŸeydi. Fakat onlar?n bu davran??? daha sonralar? tüm dünyadaki entelektüellere ilham kayna?? oldu

How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?

One of the sicknesses of the twentieth century? I'll tell you the worst one. People can't stand to be alone. Can't tolerate it! So they go to the movies, get drive-in hamburgers, put their home telephone numbers in the crapsheets and say 'Please call me up!' It's sick. People hate their own company --- they cry when they see themselves in mirrors. It scares them, the way their faces look. Maybe that's a clue to the whole thing...

In countries where all the crooked politicians wear pinstriped suits, the best people are bare-assed.

insight," and the "message" of his books (which is no message at all) is similar to Gogol's in Nabokov's summary: "Something is very wrong and all men are mild lunatics engaged in petty pursuits that seem to them very important, while an

keeps Mexico ticking over

the sacrifice of health and well-being to corporate-denominated images of bodily appearance.

But that did not strike me as immoderate. It was a society that was pledged to austerity that was probably the most prone to going on binges. So, philosophically, the name didn't fit. But

There is a great fear of natural things in Australia. But no one mentions the drunks, who are everywhere and are a great deal more dangerous.

a laboratory of social and economic horror.