Quotes About Society

between the 'left brain' and the 'right brain'.) This kind of overall way of thinking is not only a fertile source of new theoretical ideas: it is needed for the human mind to function in a generally harmonious way, which could in turn help to make possible an orderly and stable society. As

a proper world view, appropriate for its time, is generally one of the basic factors that is essential for harmony in the individual and in society as a whole.

Some make you sing and some make you scream, One makes you wish that you'd never been seen. But there's a shop on the corner that's selling papier-mache, Making bullet-proof faces, Charlie Manson, Cassius Clay. If you want it, boys, get it here, thing. - Sweet Thing

I'm afraid of Americans.

It's a god-awful small affair To the girl with the mousy hair But her mummy is yelling, No! And her daddy has told her to go But her friend is nowhere to be seen Now she walks through her sunken dream To the seat with the clearest view And she's hooked to the silver screen. - Life on Mars?

David Thomas: What do you think is the worst crime that could possibly be committed? What is the crime that offends you most? David Bowie: Seeing a man humble himself in his capacity as a worker to somebody else, and having to have that accepted as a given situation.

The wrong words make you listen in this criminal world. - Fantastic Voyage

My brain hurt like a warehouse It had no room to spare I had to cram so many things to store everything in there And all the fat-skinny people And all the tall-short people And all the nobody people And all the somebody people I never thought I'd need so many people. - Five Years

Humorists are precisely the kinds of guys who can cut through the orgy of petty indignation that the aging baby boomers are imposing on this great country.

Between 1000 C.E. and 1945, the longest period of uninterrupted peace in Europe was a fifty-one-year stretch between the Battle of Waterloo and the Austro-Prussian War. That tranquil period came amid the industrial revolution, as millions moved from farm to city. Was it harder, for a while, to find soldiers? Or did people feel too busy to fight?

The health of an enlightened and progressive society is measured by how vibrant is its science fiction, since that is where true self-critique and appraisal and hope lie.

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion. – Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Chapter II, Part II

Adam Smith saw what had happened to markets and societies for millennia. Winners are never satisfied with success in the latest market battle, with a cool product or financial or political achievement. As humans, we use any recent advantage to ensure that competitors will fail in future struggles.

In principle, an open society sees information flow as a good thing, to be hampered only in the presence of strong evidence that harm cannot be prevented by any other means.

Of course none compare to the exponential growth unleashed by late-20th Century America's synergy of government, enterprise and unleashed individual competitiveness. One result was the first society transforming itself from the feudal pyramid of privilege to a diamond shape[227] whose vast and healthy and well-educated middle class proved to be the generator of nearly all our great accomplishments.

There isn't one America anymore. If there ever had been.

Political freedom is great. But personal, social, and emotional freedom—when it becomes an ultimate end—absolutely sucks. It leads to a random, busy life with no discernible direction, no firm foundation, and in which, as Marx put it, all that's solid melts to air. It turns out that freedom isn't an ocean you want to spend your life in. Freedom is a river you want to get across so you can plant yourself on the other side—and fully commit to something.

Since the 1970s wealthy donors have heavily financed efforts to cut taxes and public spending. The success they've had helps explain why government now can't do as many things, which gives private funders new leverage in shaping society.

the pet health interests of rich people may or may not line up with what society overall should give priority to in seeking medical breakthroughs. As the Times warned: "The philanthropists' war on disease risks widening that gap, as a number of the campaigns, driven by personal adversity, target illnesses that predominantly afflict white people—like cystic fibrosis, melanoma and ovarian cancer.

There's something heroic about wealthy crusaders who aim to spend down their fortunes to improve society—that is, assuming you like what they're doing. If you don't, that sense of urgency can be unnerving. How many liberals, for example, would be thrilled if the Koch brothers announced that they intended to give away their vast fortune as quickly as possible to make "America a better place"?

There is no such thing as a social crack user.

For the first time there appeared on earth kings, dictators, high priests, emperors, prime ministers, presidents, governors, mayors, generals, admirals, police chiefs, judges, lawyers, and jailers, along with dungeons, jails, penitentiaries, and concentration camps. Under the tutelage of the state, human beings learned for the first time how to bow, grovel, kneel, and kowtow. In many ways the rise of the state was the descent of the world from freedom to slavery.

Unlike water, which prefers to lie flat as it accumulates, material wealth in complex societies likes to pile itself up into huge pyramids.

Anarcho-capitalism is not by definition libertarian. It is rather a prediction, not a definition.