Quotes About Society

This is the paradox of the power of literature: it seems that only when it is persecuted does it show its true powers, challenging authority, whereas in our permissive society it feels that it is being used merely to create the occasional pleasing contrast to the general ballooning of verbiage.

At times I feel your voice is reaching me from far away, while I am prisoner of a gaudy and unlivable present, when all forms of human society have reached an extreme of their cycle and there is no imagining what new forms they may assume. And I hear, from your voice, the invisible reasons which make cities live, through which perhaps, once dead, they will come to life again.

?u aç?k ki, bugün s?ra d??? olmayan ki?ilerin dünyas?nda ya??yoruz, en basit bireysellikleri bile reddedilen ki?ilerin dünyas?nda, öyle ki, insanlar önceden belirlenmi? davran??lar?n soyut bir toplam?na dönü?mü? durumdalar. bugün sorun, insan?n benli?inin bir bölümünü yitirmesi de?il art?k, tümünü yitirmesi, hiç var olmamas?d?r.

pensò che solo quella democrazia appena nata poteva meritare il nome di democrazia; era quello il valore che invano poco fa egli andava cercando nella modestia delle cose e non trovava; perché quell'epoca era ormai finita, e piano piano a invadere il campo era tornata l'ombra grigia dello Stato burocratico, uguale prima durante e dopo il fascismo, la vecchia separazione tra amministratori e amministrati.

I am a prisoner of a gaudy and unlivable present, where all forms of human society have reached an extreme of their cycle and there is no imagining what new forms they may assume.

The Society for the Implementation of Christmas Consumption has launched a campaign to push the Destructive Gift!" (...) "The important thing (...) is that the Destructive Gift serves to destroy articles of every sort: just what's needed to speed up the pace of consumption and give the market a boost...

Viviamo in un paese dove si verificano sempre le cause e non gli effetti

Memory truly counts — for an individual, a society, a culture — only if it holds together the imprint of the past and the plan for the future, if it allows one to do things without forgetting what one wanted to do, and to become without ceasing to be, to be without ceasing to become.

half-respected conventions spread insecurity and incoherence of behavior rather than freedom and frankness.

our genteel lifestyle seemed guaranteed for all eternity by the availability of cheap labor.

Insomma, c'erano anche da noi tutte le cause della Rivoluzione francese. Solo che non eravamo in Francia, e la Rivoluzione non ci fu. Viviamo in un Paese dove si verificano sempre le cause e non gli effetti.

marriage is the encounter of two egoisms that grind each other reciprocally and from which spread the cracks in the foundations of civilized society, the pillars of public welfare stand on the viper's eggshells of private barbarity.

I am not trapped in the wrong body; I am trapped in a world that makes very little space for bodies like mine.

The public school has become the established church of secular society.

Activity, effort, achievement, or service outside a hierarchical relationship and unmeasured by professional standards, threatens a commodity-intensive society.

In the Middle Ages there was no salvation outside the Church, and the theologians had a hard time explaining what God did with those pagans who were visibly virtuous or saintly. Similarly, in contemporary society effort is not productive unless it is done at the behest of a boss, and economists have a hard time dealing with the obvious usefulness of people when they are outside the corporate control of a corporation, volunteer agency, or labour camp.

P3- everywhere not only education but society as a whole needs deschooling.

Our market-intensive societies measure material progress by the increase in the volume and variety of commodities produced. And taking our cue from this sector, we measure social progress by the distribution of access to these commodities. Economics has been developed as propaganda for the takeover by large-scale commodity producers.

Rodeado por herramientas todopoderosas, el hombre queda reducido a ser instrumento de sus instrumentos.

Sexism is clearly not the continuation of patriarchal power relations in modern societies. Rather, it is a hitherto unthinkable individual degradation of one-half of humanity on a socio-biological grounds. The lower prestige assigned by patriarchal societies (of the Mediterranean or of any other type) must therefore be carefully distinguished from the personal degradation of each individual woman who, under the regime of sex, is forced to compete with men.

Only when we stop looking at male roles and forms of power as the norm and begin to look at female arrangements and perceive them as equally valid and significant - though perhaps different in form - can we see how male and female roles are intertwined, and begin to understand how human societies operate.

The computer is credited with the capacity to create unsuspected amounts of busywork. We are straight on our way towards an energy-obsessed low energy society in a world that worships work but has nothing for people to do.

A society dedicated to the protection of equally distributed, modern and effective tools for the exercise of productive liberties cannot come into existence unless the commodities and resources on which the exercise of those liberties is based are equally distributed to all.

Housework, handicrafts, subsistence agriculture, radical technology, learning exchanges, and the like are degraded into activities for the idle, the unproductive, the very poor, or the very rich. A society that fosters intense dependence on commodities thus turns its unemployed into either its poor or its dependents.