Quotes About Society

Women's fashion is a subtle form of bondage. It's men's way of binding them. We put them in these tight, high-heeled shoes, we make them wear these tight clothes and we say they look sexy. But they're actually tied up.

You become tyrannized by this notion that women must not only be treated equally, but they must never fail.

Part of the resistance of Westerners to becoming patrons is that they react negatively to the idea of participating in a society that is basically built on institutionalized inequality.121

What was once an open space between law and freedom, one governed by character and truth, is now deserted, so law must now do what character has abandoned.

What has happened, of course, is that over a period of time our society has slowly exited the moral world and it now lives, instead, in a psychological world. The difference is that in one there is right and wrong and in the other there is not. In this other world, we are comfortable or not, psychologically healthy or not, dysfunctional or not, but we are never sinners.

How many things we acquire only because others bought them and because they are in a good many homes. Many of our problems are explained by the fact that we copy the example of others: rather than following reason, we are led astray by convention. If only a few people did something, we wouldn't imitate them. But when the majority starts to act a certain way, we follow along, too, as if something should be more honorable just because it's more frequent.11

Whether you are working for those closest to you now or working for future generations, both approaches are worthy of admiration. Seneca shows us that there are countless ways we can all contribute to society, whether benefiting one or many. Regardless of our individual skills and inclinations, there's a way open for everyone.

Vivimos sometidos a la tiranía de los deseos ajenos

Could it be that they were sick enough at this point of their own lives to get worked up about those of others? That's always the case. We live under the dictates of others' desires. Natalie and François didn't want to become a TV series for their crowd. For the moment, they loved the idea of being two people alone in the world, in the most perfect cliché of romantic schmaltzy serenity.

Hoy en día vivimos sometidos a la dictadura de la felicidad de los demás. O más bien de la presunta felicidad…

By the time that the war came to an end, British society was generally inclined to reject the idealistic case for imperialism (that it would extend the benefits of advanced civilization to a backward region) as quixotic, and the practical case for it (that it would be of benefit to Britain to expand her empire) as untrue.

I'm a latecomer to the environmental issue, which for years seemed to me like an excuse for more government regulation. But I can see that in rich societies, voters are paying less attention to economic issues and more to issues of the spirit, including the environment.

If this is the Information Age, what are we so informed about?

There is a darkness in you. In all of us, probably. Beasts we keep chained. Ordinary men have to keep the chains strong, for if we let the beast loose then society will turn upon us with fiery vengeance. Kings though...well, who is there to turn upon them? So the chains are made of straw. It is the curse of kings, Helikaon, that they can become monsters. And they invariably do.

Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation. Within a few short decades, society—its world view, its basic values, its social and political structures, its key institutions—rearranges itself. We are currently living through such a time. —Peter Drucker

One of the reasons people steer clear of environmentalism is all the guilt associated with it. The creepy feeling that by doing what everyone else in one's society is doing - driving, washing the dishes, catching a flight - we are bringing about the end of the world.

All rich countries now employ legions of functionaries whose primary function is to make poor people feel bad about themselves.

Young people in Europe and North America in particular, but increasingly throughout the world, are being psychologically prepared for useless jobs, trained in how to pretend to work, and then by various means shepherded into jobs that almost nobody really believes serve any meaningful purpose.

Women everywhere are always expected to continually imagine what one situation or another would look like from a male point of view. Men are almost never expected to do the same for women. So deeply internalized is this pattern of behavior that many men react to any suggestion that they might do otherwise as if it were itself an act of violence.

There seems a general rule that, the more obviously one's work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.

Capitalism, he noted, is not something imposed on us by some outside force. It only exists because every day we wake up and continue to produce it. If we woke up one morning and all collectively decided to produce something else, then we wouldn't have capitalism anymore.

Everyday we wake up and collectively make a world together; but which one of us, left to our own devices, would ever decide they wanted to make a world like this one?

Yet for some reason, we as a society have collectively decided it's better to have millions of human beings spending years of their lives pretending to type into spreadsheets or preparing mind maps for PR meetings than freeing them to knit sweaters, play with their dogs, start a garage band, experiment with new recipes, or sit in cafés arguing about politics, and gossiping about their friends' complex polyamorous love affairs.

There was a time when academia was society's refuge for the eccentric, brilliant, and impractical. No longer. It is now the domain of professional self-marketers. As for the eccentric, brilliant, and impractical: it would seem society now has no place for them at all.