Quotes About Society

But you must remember that they are Viennese and nobody is good enough for the Viennese.

Until the Married Women's Property Act of 1870, everything a married woman earned legally belonged to her husband. It wasn't until the Act of 1882 that she could retain her own property once she was married.

And English society was was not exactly welcoming to these rich newcomers: Imagine Kim Kardashian marrying Prince Henry today and you get the general idea of the suspicion and disdain that the Americans encountered.

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their common sense.

We have reinforced this limited choice by putting socialism in our left hand and capitalism in our right hand, leaving no other hands. The

Increasingly I perceived myself as being neither on the left nor the right but as believing in a distinct "third position," mistrustful of big government of whatever political hue, which I perceived in the Orwellian sense as being Big Brother, the crusher of freedom.

We are no longer in a world in which it is thought normal to be moderate or even necessary to be normal. Most men now are not so much rushing to extremes as merely sliding to extremes; and even reaching the most violent extremes by being almost entirely passive. . . . We can no longer trust even the normal man to value and guard his own normality.

The disintegration of rational society started in the drift from the hearth and the family," says Chesterton. "The solution must be a drift back.

We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.

You plan the wars you masters of men plan the wars and point the way and we will point the gun.

Eleven years later. Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles our share.

I don't want to be an oddity, a freak, or a curiosity. I don't want to be the car wreck that people slow down to gawk at.

I was taught to confront things you can't avoid. Death is one of those things. To live in a society where you're trying not to look at it is stupid because looking at death throws us back into life with more vigour and energy. The fact that flowers don't last for ever makes them beautiful.

So society says it's great to be big. But being big can take away from the specialness... The growth thing, it's like a cafe. You open up a really cool little organic vegetarian cafe, and there's a certain type of people that come to it and you really bond with them. And then it gets popular and you wonder if you should make it bigger or open up another one. It's a question of knowing when to stop, knowing when you lose what you had originally.

What are you going to teach me about right and wrong? I know what is wrong. I have done wrong. I am told every day, by every face I see, every wall I face, that I am wrong.

There's nothing wrong with the younger generation that becoming taxpayers won't cure.

we've built a society that gets what it needs from the Earth and ecosystems but does far too little to maintain the health of the ecosystems we depend on, which are quite literally the life-support systems of the planet.

Das Kapital

Contrary to the popular view, Marx did not predict the formation of communist countries, with which he is so closely identified. Rather, he predicted that capitalism would be utterly successful on a number of fronts.

This means that workers can expect to get more money as society becomes more advanced, but only because more money is produced. As more of it is produced, it skews the balance of supply vs. demand and so causes inflation – it is as if money itself gets cheaper. So the rate at which wages increase will tend to be the same as the rate of inflation – nominal but never real, in economic terms.

The invisible hand follows profit, and works less well at providing for needs where the route to making money is less obvious. Aware of this limitation, Smith believed that the state should pay for things like public education to stop people from becoming too stupid.

We're fat, we're greedy, and we don't give a shit. Our religion is TV. Our saviour is Bill Gates. We've learned our lessons well. We know how to put number one first.

My secret weapon is my anger. That's what stimulates me as an artist. I want change. I want it yesterday. I'm pissed off at America. Society. American movies. American TV. American culture. American politicians. Capitalism. I'm a little like my old man in that way only I'm a recovered drunk. He wasn't. I should have been dead years ago like my brother but somehow I dodged the bullet and it gave me something to say. Impatience and rage are always just beneath the surface for me.

There is an immutable law that wherever cops congregate, more cops must join in.