Quotes About Society

The problem with Christian belief–-I mean real christian belief, the belief that there is a God and a devil and a heaven and a hell--is that it is not a fashionable thing to believe.

My only consolation was I wasn't alone. Most Americans aren't living very good stories. It's not our fault, I don't think. We are suckered into it. We are brainwashed, I think.

Television drives me crazy sometimes because everybody is so good-looking, and yet you walk through the aisles of the grocery stores, and nobody looks like that.

The future does not belong to those who believe in socialism. The future belongs to those who believe in freedom.

O tempora, o mores

Intellectuals"?' Brunetti repeated. 'I think it's more true to say they're the cartographers of the Flat Earth Society

Perhaps the difference lay in the fact that, to the public administration, these people were problems, while to Don Alvise they were people with problems.

She reminds me a bit of those women in nineteenth-century novels, interested in the moral improvement of their inferiors,' she said.

At times Brunetti thought Italy was a country where everyone knew everything while no one was willing to say anything. In private, everyone was eager to comment with absolute certainty on the secret doings of politicians, Mafia leaders, movie stars; put them into a situation where their remarks might have legal consequences, and Italy turned into the largest clam bed in the world.

Where does American money come from? Steel. Railways. You know how it is over there. It doesn't matter if you murder or rob to get it. The trick is in keeping it for a hundred years, and then you're aristocrats.

Brunetti picked up his and took a small sip. 'I'm probably quoting him badly, but somewhere he says that the laws of the state will take care of public crimes, and that's why we need religion, so that we can believe divine justice will take care of private crime.

We don't like to admit it, but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything. All truly civilized people – the ancients no less than us – have civilized themselves through the wilful repression of the old, animal self.

You want to know what Classics are? said a drunk Dean of Admissions to me at a faculty party a couple of years ago. I'll tell you what Classics are. Wars and homos.

The absurd does not liberate; it binds. —ALBERT CAMUS

distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget it: where we were, what we were.

We don't like to admit it," said Julian, "but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything. All truly civilized people—the ancients no less than us—have civilized themselves through the willful repression of the old, animal self.

Elle ne s'intéressait pas aux livres dans lesquels les enfants grandissaient, car (dans la vie comme en littérature) ce processus entrainait un affaiblissement accéléré et inexplicable du caractère ; de façon totalement inattendue, les héros et les héroïnes renonçaient à leurs aventures pour un amour insipide, se mariaient et fondaient une famille, et, en général, se comportaient comme un troupeau de vaches.

When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled. It has no apparatus to deal with the boor, the liar, the lout, and the antidemocrat in general.

Society is a codependent group of narcissistic hypocrites without mirrors.

Everyone believes there are horrible people doing horrible things; things we would never, ever do. But we do those same horrible things. There is no us and them. Only we.

schoolchildren. Plus he has erectile dysfunction.

In science, having more data is always preferred. In life, secrets and lies make society manageable.

It is another of consumerism's ironies that, although it functions like a mental trap, we often think of it as an escape.

when you know how a nation deals with the Bible you may generally know what a nation is.