Quotes About Society

Rather than humanizing technology, modern man prefers to technify man.

The Gospels and the Communist Manifesto are on the wane; the world's future lies in the power of Coca-Cola and pornography.

It is not just that human trash accumulates in cities—it is that cities turn what accumulates in them into trash.

In order not to think of the world which science describes, man gets drunk on technology.

Finding himself,' for modern man, means dissolving himself in any collective entity.

Instead of looking for explanations for the fact of inequality, anthropologists should look for the explanation for the notion of equality.

Al repudiar los ritos, el hombre se reduce a animal que copula y come.

The barbarian either totally mocks or totally worships. Civilization is a smile that discreetly combines irony and respect.

Modern man defends nothing energetically except his right to debauchery.

The two terms of the democratic alternative today—oppressive bureaucracy or repugnant plutocracy—are canceling each other out. Combining into a single term: opulent bureaucracy. At once repugnant and oppressive.

The idea of "the free development of personality" seems admirable as long as one does not meet an individual whose personality has developed freely.

The tissues of society become cancerous when the duties of some are transformed into the rights of others.

The intelligent leftist admits that his generation will not construct the perfect society, but trusts in a future generation. His intelligence discovers his personal impotence, but his leftism prevents him from discovering man's impotence.

It is no longer enough for the citizen to submit—the modern state demands accomplices.

Anguish over the decline of civilization is the affliction of a reactionary. The democrat cannot lament the disappearance of something of which he is ignorant.

Modern man denies himself every metaphysical dimension and considers himself a mere object of science. But he screams when they exterminate him as such.

The cause of democracy's stupidities is confidence in the anonymous citizen; and the cause of its crimes is the anonymous citizen's confidence in himself.

The bourgeoisie, in the feudal framework, settles in small urban centers where it becomes structured and civilized. With the break-up of this framework, the bourgeoisie spreads across all of society, invents the nationalist state, rationalist technology, anonymous urban agglomerations, industrial society, the mass man, and finally the process in which society wavers between the despotism of the mob and the despotism of the expert.

Het volkse verwarren met het democratische is de strategie van de democraat.

If one only aspires to provide a growing number of persons with a growing number of goods, without worrying about the quality of the persons, or of the goods, then capitalism is the perfect solution.

Leveling is the barbarian's substitute for order.

Un diploma de dentista es respetable, pero uno de filósofo es grotesco.

Modern man fears technology's destructive capacity, when it is its constructive capacity that threatens him.

Legal freedom of expression has grown alongside the sociological enslavement of thought.