Quotes About Society

In the 1950s the three most heinous things in America were heroin use, communism, and homosexuality.

The Parisians looked at each other constantly but were more curious about each other's shoes than their sexual availability.

No one respected them for their labor in a country where the idea of honorable poverty had vanished.

Me temo, cariño —me dijo ella—, que ya no tienes edad para ser un maricón de los de antes.

We proceed in this society of ours on the possibly valid but untrue assumption that the public knows what it wants-- indeed, that it is given sufficient information about what is available to make such a judgment. And then we jump, irresponsibly and absurdly, to the notion that there is a valid relationship between what the public wants and what it should want.

A revolution never will start among a bunch of bums.

History is past politics and politics present history.

As Bastiat understood, a very low rate of interest may benefit the rich, who have access to credit, more than the poor.

The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple, and cast naked into the world, would immediately sink to the lowest rank of society, without a hope of emerging from their obscurity.

and the most civilized portion of mankind.

unhappy condition of men who endured the weight, without sharing the benefits, of society.

A Locrian who proposed any new law stood forth in the assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and if the law was rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled.

the Imperial government; as it was instituted by Augustus, and maintained by those princes who understood their own interest and that of the people, it may be defined an absolute monarchy disguised by the forms of a commonwealth.

I realize that homosexuality is a serious problem for anyone who is—but then, of course, heterosexuality is a serious problem for anyone who is, too. And being a man is a serious problem and being a woman is, too. Lots of things are problems.

Like the best science fiction, Star Trek does not show us other worlds so meaningfully as it shows us our own—

Progress in human affairs, whether in science or in history or in society, has come mainly through the bold readiness of human beings not to confine themselves to seeking piecemeal improvements in the way things are done, but to present fundamental challenges in the name of reason to the current way of doing things and to the avowed or hidden assumptions on which it rests

What is history?, our answer, consciously or unconsciously, reflects our own position in time, and forms part of our answer to the broader question, what view we take of the society in which we live.

To enable man to understand the society of the past and to increase his mastery over the society of the present is the dual function of history.

Corporations must serve the people, Americans thought.

Civil liberty," explained Federalist leader John Jay, who then served as New York's governor, "consists not in a right to every man to do just as he pleases, but it consists in an equal right…to do…whatever the equal and constitutional laws of the country admit to be consistent with the public good.

What better way to destroy a civilization, society or a race than to set people into the wild oscillations which follow their turning over their judgment and decision-making faculties to a superhero?

eating dog food at the foot of the rich man's table.

It was hard to believe that in a society of computer chips, banana chips, and anti-lock brakes, of sitcoms, Home Shopping Clubs, and pay-per-view, and of surround-sound stereos and microwave ovens—it was hard to believe that such destitution could exist at all, much less under the very nose of the same society… He'd

In 1855 in Manchester County, Virginia, there were thirty-four free black families, with a mother and father and one child or more, and eight of those free families owned slaves, and all eight knew each other's business.