Quotes About Society

Men say," Liz reaches for her scissors, "'I can't endure it when women cry'--just as people say, 'I can't endure this wet weather.' As if it were nothing to do with the men at all, the crying. Just one of those things that happen.

In England there is no mercy for the poor. You pay for everything, even a broken neck." 472

Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

Whereas we bless an old soldier and give him alms, pitying his blind or limbless state, we do not make heroes of women mangled in the struggle to give birth.

When men decided women could be educated - this is what I think - they educated them on the male plan; they put them into schools with mottoes and school songs and muddy team games, they made them were collars and ties. It was a way to concede the right to learning, yet remain safe; the products of the system would always be inferior to the original model. Women were forced to imitate men, and bound not to succeed at it.

Just think, she said to herself. I could be living on the Right Bank. I could be married to a senior clerk at the Treasury. I could be sitting with my feet up, embroidering a linen handkerchief with a rambling-rose design. Instead I'm on the rue des Cordeliers in pursuit of a baguette, with a three-inch blade for comfort.

Bargain all you like. Consign yourself to the hangman if you must. The people don't give a fourpenny fuck." 512

And indeed, who can doubt that everything would be different and better, if only England were ruled by village idiots and their drunken friends?

Men like Carew, he knows, tend to blame him, Cromwell, for Anne's rise in the world; he facilitated it, he broke the old marriage and let in the new. He does not expect them to soften to him, to include him in their companionship; he only wants them not to spit in his dinner.

One summer at the fag end of the nineties, I had to go out of London to talk to a literary society, of the sort that must have been old-fashioned when the previous century closed. When the day came, I wondered why I'd agreed to it; but yes is easier than no, and of course when you make a promise you think the time will never arrive: that there will be a nuclear holocaust, or something else diverting.

But what would happen … I mean, what would be so awful … if they did meet up?" "Why, it would be like the West," Samira said. "There would be harassment. People would be all the time having love affair.

somehow, everybody is poorer except the priests.

He can see that, in the years ahead, treason will take new and various forms. When the last treason act was made, no one could circulate their words in a printed book or bill, because printed books were not thought of. He feels a moment of jealousy toward the dead, to those who served kings in slower times than these; nowadays the products of some bought or poisoned brain can be disseminated through Europe in a month.

como le dijo una vez el rey con tristeza, sólo los hombres y mujeres muy pobres tienen libertad para elegir a quién amar.

Somewhere – or Nowhere, perhaps – there is a society ruled by philosophers. They have clean hands and pure hearts. But even in the metropolis of light there are middens and manure-heaps, swarming with flies. Even in the republic of virtue you need a man who will shovel up the shit.

England needs roads, forts, harbours, bridges. Men need work. It's a shame to see them begging their bread, when honest labour could keep the realm secure. Can we not put them together, the hands and the task?

Somewhere—or Nowhere, perhaps—there is a society ruled by philosophers. They have clean hands and pure hearts. But even in the metropolis of light there are middens and manure-heaps, swarming with flies. Even in the republic of virtue you need a man who will shovel up the shit, and somewhere it is written that Cromwell is his name.

He is not to suffer, because in France the age of barbarism is over, superseded by a machine, approved by a committee.

Southwark whores bawling out their prices like butchers selling dead flesh.

They say that Cain invented cities. And if it was not he, it was someone else fond of murder.

The Commons. God rot them. ... They never think higher than their pockets.

I can remember the days,' Mirabeau said, 'when we didn't have public opinion. No one had ever heard of such a thing.

It was too much for the Commons to digest, that rich men might have some duty to the poor.

Right is what you can get away with, and wrong is what they whip you for.