Quotes About Society

It is the logic of consumerism that undermines the values of loyalty and permanence and promotes a different set of values that is destructive of family life.

A society that has made 'nostalgia' a marketable commodity on the cultural exchange quickly repudiates the suggestion that life in the past was in any important way better than life today.

The issues that give rise to strident professions of faith on both sides of the ideological divide seem to have little bearing on the problems most people face in everyday life. Politics has become a matter of ideological gestures while the real problems remain unsolved.

Since "the society" has no future, it makes sense to live only for the moment, to fix our eyes on our own "private performance," to become connoisseurs of our own decadence, to cultivate a "transcendental self-attention.

In the nineteenth century, elites alone obeyed the laws of fashion, exchanging old possessions for new ones for no other reason than that they had gone out of style. Economic orthodoxy condemned the rest of society to a life of drudgery and mere subsistence. The mass production of luxury items now extends aristocratic habits to the masses.

Today the treatment of such themes is more explicit than ever; moreover, advertising encourages men as well as women to see the creation of the self as the highest form of creativity.

A ideologia do crescimento pessoal, superficialmente otimista, irradia um profundo desespero e resignação. É a fé dos que não têm fé.

Capitalism has severed the ties of personal dependence only to revive dependence under cover of bureaucratic rationality.

We long for the suspension of self-consciousness, of the pseudo-analytic attitude that has become second nature; but neither art nor religion, historically the great emancipators from the prison of the self, retain the power to discourage disbelief. In a society based so largely on illusions and appearances, the ultimate illusions, art and religion, have no future.

hemos cogido nuestros cuerpos vigorosos y resistentes de cazadores-recolectores y los hemos dejado caer en un mundo artificial de ocio.

Don't be ridiculous, Charlie, people love the parents who beat their kids in department stores. It's the ones who just let their kids wreak havoc that everybody hates.

The evening papers print what they do and get away with it because by afternoon the human mind is ruined anyhow.

All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful, but the beauty is grim.

Bravery raises the moral and social conscience of a society.

PRESCRIPTION FOR REBELLION' — REVISITED BY CHRISTOPHER S. HYATT, PH.D. Mental health is the ability to deny reality and repress feelings within the boundaries and parameters established by one's peer group(s). — Christopher S. Hyatt,

Art is the direct confrontation between an irreducible individual soul, unreachable by society, and the facts of nature and human nature. The critic, not the connoisseur, reconstructs this confrontation.

By the time the genocide has ended, it is usually clear that the ordinary, integrative institutions of society remained centers of power during the killing and shared responsibility for it.

Genocidal societies also show a marked tendency toward what psychologists call "just-world" thinking: Victims are believed to have brought their suffering upon themselves and, thus, to deserve what they get.3

Most people's identities were important to them, something they wouldn't shed. It was proud, it was timid, it was laudable, it was stupid. It stuck people with dumb friends and crummy marriages. Trapped them in dead towns and murderous neighborhoods. It manufactured tradition from the uninterrupted drudgery of successive generations. It transformed ignorant belief into folklore, and ignorance itself into defiance. Identity was a trap.

But democrats are seldom welcome on planets run by totalitarian governments, and scarcely more welcome on planets where anarchy prevails--this is due to the very nature of democracy, the only practical compromise between totalitarianism and anarchy.

When society denies that ritual abuse exists, it literally denies survivors permission to heal.

But whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living. And someone needs to take the fall for this. So instead of blaming no one for this (which is kind of cowardly) or blaming everyone (which is kind of meaningless), I'm going to blame John Cusack.

You used to be able to tell the difference between hipsters and homeless people. Now, it's between hipsters and retards. I mean, either that guy in the corner in orange safety pants holding a protest sign and wearing a top hat is mentally disabled or he is the coolest fucking guy you will ever know.

Being interesting has been replaced by being identifiable.