Quotes About Society

If a Martian were watching our television shows, he'd conclude that guns were more common than hammers. They're not evil themselves--they're tools--but everywhere you go, bad people have them. It behooves the righteous to at least know how they work.

bumper sticker said "I dream of an America where a chicken can cross the road without having its motives questioned.

You mean, we should only beat up young people?" Davenport asked. "There are as many old assholes as there are young ones. Especially since the boomers got old.

Fuckin' trash, he thought. Where were the cops when you needed one?

He looked terrific. Not that any women would notice: they'd be too busy talking to each other on their fucking cell phones.

Should Virgil grow a mustache, he'd look like everybody else, Virgil thought: a monoculture of German-Scandinavian white people, now getting a little salsa poured on it, to the great relief of everyone.

the police don't stop crime; they simply record it, and sometimes they catch the people who do it.

The advanced interstellar culture operates on a barter system. Never saw that one coming.

Virgil thanked him, and as he was leaving, said, "I wouldn't necessarily recommend you invite a cop inside, when you've been smoking dope." "It's medicinal," Gates said. "Besides, does anybody really care anymore?

So we're the monster police, too?" I said to Tom. "Correct," he replied. "The only real question is, who are the monsters?" "They ask that question in every monster movie, you know. It's an actual trope." "I know," Tom said. "What does it say about us that it's relevant every single time they ask it?

the cynical could afford the luxury of their cynicism because of the stability of the system they mocked.

The only real question is, who are the monsters?" "They ask that question in every monster movie, you know. It's an actual trope." "I know," Tom said. "What does it say about us that it's relevant every single time they ask it?

at the moment, the number of fundamentally selfish and self-interested people that human civilization could tolerate, particularly in the social tranche that could actually have an impact on the fate of humanity, had shrunk considerably

I believe in no God, no invisible man in the sky. But there is something more powerful than each of us, a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. But it is only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. Any man who tells you different either has his hand in your pocket, or a pistol to your neck. —Andrew Ryan

increasing blasé acceptance of the USA as a nation under siege from within, manning the barricades with the growing legions of hired cops, gypsy cops, rent-a-cops, uniformed thugs insulating the rich from the poor?

It was largely a land without Borders - something that attracted him and disturbed him both. The land didn't need laws. But the people did.

An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.

We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.

We can shoot rockets into space but we can't cure anger or discontent.

Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor.

Ain't many guys travel around together," he mused. "I don't know why. Maybe ever'body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.

I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments

This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from I to we. If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into I, and cuts you off forever from the we.

What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster.