Quotes About Society

It is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions.

The argument is that they need to assimilate and adopt American customs. And that feeling often leads to cruelty and crime.

All the political name-calling and putting blame on immigrants.

As I listened to the inmates' schemes to reenter the world, I did not miss the irony that we were being released while the innocent remained behind. We were the scourge on society. We were the "lepers," And we were about to be set free.

Black and white, good and evil, is just a way to simplify life and make it easier for people to deal with. People love it too; that's why so many people go to church on a Sunday.

There's a lot of people saying we'd be better off dead. I don't feel like a satan but I guess I am...keep on rockin' the free world.

Welfare mothers make better lovers

Cheating means something though," she said. "Americans are obsessed with it." "Americans in particular?" "I think they worry about it more—so it happens more.

The Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man,

It's funny about 'passing.' We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it.

She isn't stupid. She's intelligent enough in a purely feminine way. Eighteenth-century France would have been a marvellous setting for her, or the old South if she hadn't made the mistake of being born a Negro.

She wished to find out about this hazardous business of "passing," this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one's chance in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly.

It's easy for a Negro to 'pass' for white. But I don't think it would be so simple for a white person to 'pass' for colored.

Clare Kendry cared nothing for the race. She only belonged to it.

I try not to name too many labels - not because it's not cool, but because it starts getting political.

You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.

There is no way of being a creative writer in America without being a loser.

You can't be a good writer in the States anymore... Because to be a good one you have to have a country where you can be poor and still eat, and still make your living standards secondary to your writing. Thoreau himself couldn't do that in the States today... (Sept. 1953 letter to Millen Brand)

Safety and security don't just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear.

I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.

I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.

As I have said, the first thing is to be honest with yourself. You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself... Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility.

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.

We owe our children – the most vulnerable citizens in any society – a life free from violence and fear.