Quotes About Society

One of the things I find very little of in America - and certainly not on Broadway - are plays with political attitudes.

Laws are important precisely because in a democracy they reflect the attitudes and aspirations of those they govern.

The rule is not written anywhere, it's not etched in any - but, I mean, that's the prevailing attitude of this entire society. Don't have an adventure.

I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind.

People are so obsessed with that these days. As long as you're healthy, what difference do a few pounds make? Crazy diets. Thirteen-year-old girls on magazine covers who wind up in hospitals because they're so anorexic. Real women don't look like that. And who wants them to? No one wants a woman who looks sick or like she;s been from a refugee camp.

Her father said, whenever the subject came up, that if she'd lose some weight, she'd find a boyfriend. She knew that wasn't necessarily the case, since plenty of girls who had perfect figures and were half her size couldn't find a boyfriend. And other girls who were overweight were happily married, engaged or had significant others.Romance, she knew, wasn't directed tied to your weight, there were a lot of other factors.

Homelessness is not just about having a job or an apartment. Too often homelessness is due to a disordered mind.

phrased it. "The state sends him to prison, and the church gives you an apology in the

The sad thing is, I was discovering that you almost have to make a joke of being good to strangers. Up and down the country, these people doing their good deeds were doubtless being seen as slightly eccentric, when in reality and in an ideal world they should be deemed the most normal people of all.

This process of innovation is made possible by economic institutions that encourage private property, uphold contracts, create a level playing field, and encourage and allow the entry of new businesses that can bring new technologies to life. It should therefore be no surprise that it was U.S. society, not Mexico or Peru, that produced Thomas Edison, and that it was South Korea, not North Korea, that today produces technologically innovative companies such as Samsung and Hyundai.

The only way of achieving durable liberty is to . . . forge the balance necessary for building a Shackled Leviathan. True liberty can flourish neither without a state nor under the yoke of a Despotic Leviathan. But there is no universal way of building a Shackled Leviathan . . . Every country's prospects are molded by its unique history, the types of coalitions and compromises that are possible, and the exact balance of power between state and society.

We call such institutions, which have opposite properties to those we call inclusive, extractive economic institutions—extractive because such institutions are designed to extract incomes and wealth from one subset of society to benefit a different subset. E

The people who suffer from the extractive economic institutions cannot hope for absolutist rulers to voluntarily change political institutions and redistribute power in society. The only way to change these political institutions is to force the elite to create more pluralistic institutions.

Different patterns of institutions today are deeply rooted in the past because once society gets organized in a particular way, this tends to persist.

It is the way the state and society interact and control each other that determines the capacity of our state, the policies of our government, and our resilience, prosperity, security, and ultimately, liberty.

Thomas Hobbes saw things in the 1640s, as the English Civil War was raging, when he argued that people should "submit their Wills" to an all-powerful state, a Leviathan, which would then provide security and prosperity.

will refer to political institutions that are sufficiently centralized and pluralistic as inclusive political institutions. When either of these conditions fails, we will refer to the institutions as extractive political institutions.

The Black Death is a vivid example of a critical juncture, a major event or confluence of factors disrupting the existing economic or political balance in society.

Los países fracasan hoy en día porque sus instituciones económicas extractivas no crean los incentivos necesarios para que la gente ahorre, invierta e innove.

En una versión algo posmoderna de la teoría de la modernización, el columnista de The New York Times Thomas Friedman llegó a sugerir que, cuando un país tiene suficientes McDonald's, aparecen sin duda la democracia y las instituciones.

In this book we'll argue that the Egyptians in Tahrir Square, not most academics and commentators, have the right idea. In fact, Egypt is poor precisely because it has been ruled by a narrow elite that have organized society for their own benefit at the expense of the vast mass of people.

Now the Whigs also had to abide by the rule of law, the principle that laws should not be applied selectively or arbitrarily and that nobody is above the law.

Now imagine a different society, for example the Congo or Haiti, where a large fraction of the population has no means of attending school, or where, if they manage to go to school, the quality of teaching is lamentable, where teachers do not show up for work, and even if they do, there may not be any books.

Countries such as Great Britain and the United States became rich because their citizens overthrew the elites who controlled power and created a society where political rights were much more broadly distributed, where the government was accountable and responsive to citizens, and where the great mass of people could take advantage of economic opportunities.