Quotes About Society

Schools serve the same social functions as prisons and mental institutions- to define, classify, control, and regulate people.

But the guilty person is only one of the targets of punishment. For punishment is directed above all at others, at all the potentially guilty.

Justice must always question itself, just as society can exist only by means of the work it does on itself and on its institutions.

Dans le monde moderne on pouvait être échangiste, bi, trans, zoophile, SM, mais il était interdit d'être vieux. (La possibilité d'une île, Daniel 1,15)

People are suspicious of single men on vacation, after they get to a certain age: they assume that they're selfish, and probably a bit pervy. I can't say they're wrong.

I think she is going to find you too old... Yes that was it, the moment she said it I knew it was true, and the revelation caused me no surprise, it was like the echo of a dull, not unexpected shock. The age difference was the last taboo, the final limit, all the stronger for the fact that it remained the last and had replaced all the others. In the modern world you could be a swinger, bi, trans, zoo into S&M, but it was forbidden to be old.

from the bureaucratic point of view, a good citizen is a dead citizen.

Y todas las teorías de la libertad, desde Gide a Sartre, no son sino inmoralidades concebidas por solteros irresponsables.

I don't like this world. I definitely do not like it. The society in which I live disgusts me; advertising sickens me; computers make me puke. My entire work as a computer expert consists of adding to the data, the cross-referencing, the criteria of rational decision-making. It has no meaning. To tell the truth, it is even negative up to a point; a useless encumbering of the neurons. This world has need of many things, bar more information.

No one in the West will ever be happy again, she also thought, never again; happiness today is nothing but an old dream, the past conditions for its existence are simply no longer being fulfilled.

In contemporary Western society, death is like white noise to a man in good health; it fills his mind when his dreams and plans fade. With age, the noise becomes increasingly insistent, like a dull roar with the occasional screech. In another age the sound meant waiting for the kingdom of God; it is now an anticipation of death. Such is life.

Everyday morality is always a blend, variously proportioned, of perfect morality and other more ambiguous ideas, for the most part religious. The greater the proportion of pure morality in a particular system, the happier and more enduring the society. Ultimately, a society governed by the pure principles of universal morality could last until the end of the world.

Hidden all day in impenetrable black burkas, rich Saudi women transformed themselves by night into birds of paradise with their corsets, their see-through bras, their G-strings with multicolored lace and rhinestones. They were exactly the opposite of Western women, who spent their days dressed up and looking sexy to maintain their social status, then collapsed in exhaustion once they got home, abandoning all hope of seduction in favor of clothes that were loose and shapeless.

The society in which I live disgusts me; advertising sickens me; computers make me puke. My entire work as a computer expert consists of adding to the data, the cross-referencing, the criteria of rational decision-making. It has no meaning.

Le combat narcissique durerait aussi longtemps que la sociabilité elle-même, il en serait l'ultime vestige, mais il finirait par s'éteindre. Quant à l'amour, il ne fallait plus y compter.

Qué es lo que define a un hombre? ¿Cuál es la primera pregunta que se le hace a un hombre cuando quieres informarte de su estado? En algunas sociedades le preguntan primero si está casado, si tiene hijos; en las nuestras, se le pregunta en primer lugar su profesión. Lo que define ante todo al hombre occidental es el puesto que ocupa en el proceso de producción, y no su estatuto de reproductor.

I'd feel kind of like a rat abandoning ship." "Rats are intelligent mammals," he answered calmly, almost with amusement. "They will probably outlive us. Their society, at any rate, is a good deal more stable than ours.

Yksikään sivilisaatio tai aikakausi ei ole pystynyt kehittämään yksilöissään yhtä paljon katkeruutta. Siitä näkökulmasta katsottuna me elämme ennenkokematonta aikaa. Jos nykyajan henkinen tila on esitettävä yhdellä sanalla, se on epäilemättä katkeruus.

Qué es lo que define a un hombre? ¿Cuál es la primera pregunta que se le hace a un hombre cuando quieres informarte de su estado? En algunas sociedades le preguntan primero si está casado, si tiene hijos; en las nuestras, se le pregunta en primer lugar su profesión. Lo que define ante todo al hombre occidental es el puesto que ocupa en el proceso de producción.

Toynbee's idea that civilizations die not by murder but by suicide.

For the French, an intellectual didn't have to be responsible. That wasn't his job.

Përgjithësisht, grave u mungon humori, prandaj ato e shohin humorin si pjesë të cilësive burrërore".

Joissakin yhteiskunnissa kysytään ensin, onko hän naimisissa ja onko hänellä lapsia; meidän yhteiskunnassamme ihmiseltä kysytään ensimmäiseksi ammattia. Länsimaisen ihmisen määrittää hänen paikkansa tuotantoketjussa, ei niinkään status suvunjatkajana.

Haluja lietsotaan sietämättömyyteen saakka ja sitten tehdään niiden toteuttaminen yhä mahdottomammaksi; se oli ainoa periaate, jolle länsimainen yhteiskunta perustui.