Quotes About Society

What are politicians going to tell people when the Constitution is gone and we still have a drug problem?

He reached out and took her hand. Neither cared that someone might see. They had been taught all their lives that the only deep feelings between men and women were sexual, but now they knew that it was a lie. They were friends and they loved one another, and their hand-holding was perfectly innocent. It was one more thing to rejoice in, one more way in which they had risen above the system, above the machine.

There is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.

By failing to observe and understand groups, we fail to see how the world actually works and instead find ourselves surrounded by "meaningless, unrelated and destructive phenomena." It's arguable that in In Dubious Battle Steinbeck's point about crowds was that the only way to understand them is to watch them and see how they behave—to, as Doc Burton puts it, see the superorganism in action.

the tax collectors found no more money to collect because there were no more people to pay the tax.

A Fourth Turning lends people of all ages what is literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to heal (or destroy) the very heart of the republic.

Each of these sparks is linked to a specific threat about which society had been fully informed but against which it had left itself poorly protected. Afterward, the fact that these sparks were foreseeable but poorly foreseen gives rise to a new sense of urgency about institutional dysfunction and civic vulnerability. This marks the beginning of the vertiginous spiral of Crisis.

schools and churches, and that means fixing the inner cities, and that's impossible unless we fix crime. There's no fulcrum on which to rest a policy lever. People of all ages sense that something huge will have to sweep across America before the gloom can be lifted—but that's an awareness we suppress. As a nation, we're in deep denial.

The 1760s were followed by the American Revolution, the 1850s by Civil War, the 1920s by the Great Depression and World War II. All these Unraveling eras were followed by bone-jarring Crises so monumental that, by their end, American society emerged in a wholly new

By the 2020s, America could become a society that is good, by today's standards, and also one that works.

Around World War II, we were proud as a people but modest as individuals. Fewer than two people in ten said yes when asked, Are you a very important person? Today, more than six in ten say yes. Where we once thought ourselves collectively strong, we now regard ourselves as individually entitled.

Around World War II, we were proud as a people but modest as individuals. Fewer than two people in ten said yes when asked, Are you a very important person? Today, more than six in ten say yes.

The next Fourth Turning—America's next rendezvous with destiny—will begin in roughly ten years and end in roughly thirty.

During each of these previous Third Turnings, Americans felt as if they were drifting toward a cataclysm. And, as it turned out, they were. The 1760s were followed by the American Revolution, the 1850s by Civil War, the 1920s by the Great Depression and World War II. All these Unraveling eras were followed by bone-jarring Crises so monumental that, by their end, American society emerged in a wholly new form.

The Fall is where the nation is. The Fall is the locus of America.

Hence the vocation of the Church of Christ in the world, in political conflict and social strife, is inherently eschatological. The Church is the embassy of the eschaton in the world. The church is the image of what the world is in its essential being. The Church is the trustee of the society which the world, not subjected to the power of death, is to be on that last day when the world is fulfilled in all things in God.

The separation of religion from the practical affairs of society is a convenient doctrine for those who fear that social change would threaten of modify their own political and social self-interest.

The Christian social witness is achieved only insofar as Christians are deeply implicated in the real life of society - in unions and political clubs and citizen groups and the like; it is not made by Christian people gathering off by themselves in a parish house to study and discuss social issues.

Notice, too, how often the standard of help - rehabilitation, as it is usually called - is not just made up of the common morality of middle class society, but specifically in how far the client or patient or case imitates and becomes like the case worker or probation person or professional - that is, in how far the one who is being helped becomes like the one who is helping him.

Over and over again, while I was in the law school, I was astonished at how eagerly many of my peers surrendered to this regimen of professionalistic conditioning, often squelching their own most intelligent opinions or creative impulses in order to conform or to appear to be conforming.

We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.

There is no structural organization of society which can bring about the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth, since all systems can be perverted by the selfishness of man.

As a writer one doesn't belong anywhere. Fiction writers, I think, are even more outside the pale, necessarily on the edge of society. Because society and people are our meat, one really doesn't belong in the midst of society. The great challenge in writing is always to find the universal in the local, the parochial. And to do that, one needs distance.

The same applies to any artist; we are the tools and instruments of our talent. We are outsiders; we have no place in society because society is what we're watching, and dealing with.