Quotes About Society

Here is America Now: smoke, greasy fumes, the friction of tire rubber, the memory of terrifying refineries with their rubbery rotten-egg smells.

You will see, philosophical values will fade away in your country, too. To advance themselves, politicians will increasingly claim beliefs that they don't actually possess. Values are a reflection of the soul. And as souls fade, people no longer need values. Souls fade gradually because of the substitution of the inner imagination by technology: smartphones, intelligent toys, the array of electronics at malls, all make soulful intelligence less necessary.

The answer is that the destiny of poor kids in America has broad implications for our economy, our democracy, and our values.

investment in poor kids raises the rate of growth for everyone, at the same time leveling the playing field in favor of poor kids.

Our contemporary public debate recognizes this problem but assumes it is largely a "schools problem." On the contrary, we have seen that most of the challenges facing poor kids are not caused by schools.

the more fundamental problem with the big government explanation is that by most measures (all spending, or spending on the welfare state in real per capita terms, or spending as a fraction of GDP; number of government employees) the size of government lagged behind the I-we-I curve by several decades. Federal government spending and the number of employees rose steadily in tandem with the I-we-I curve from 1900 to 1970 and kept rising until they leveled off after the 1980s.

Neighborhoods are important sites of growing class segregation.

What changes behavior? What is the government's role in bringing hope to its citizens? How do we break the cycle of despair?

The more I see of what you call civilization, the more highly I think of what you call savagery!

Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their peers, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.

We know that every effort to better society, especially when injustice and sin are so ingrained, is an effort that God blesses, that God wants, that God demands of us.

A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

A man must partly give up being a man With women-folk.

The key to such power is ambiguity. In a society where the roles everyone plays are obvious, the refusal to conform to any standard will excite interest. Be both masculine and feminine, impudent and charming, subtle and outrageous. Let other people worry about being socially acceptable; those types are a dime a dozen, and you are after a power greater than they can imagine.

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.

The problem is that we humans are deep conformists.

Our successes and failures in life can be traced to how well or how badly we deal with the inevitable conflicts that confront us in society.

The vast majority of people conform to whatever is normal for the time.

At certain points in history it may be fashionable to be different and rebellious, but if a lot of people are playing that role, there is nothing different or rebellious about it.

Do not swallow the easy moralism of the day, which urges honesty at the expense of desirability.

Your false self is the accumulation of all the voice you have internalized from other people-parents and friends who want you to conform to their ideas of what you should be like and what you should do, as well as societal pressures to adhere to certain values that can easily seduce you. It also includes the voice of your own ego, which constantly tries to protect you from from unflattering truths.

Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups. —Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

The world wants to assign you a role in life and once you except that role you are doomed.