Quotes About Society

Talvez valha a pena lembrar que nesse período a ameaça às instituições liberais vinha apenas da direita política, já que entre 1945 e 1989 se supôs, quase como coisa indiscutível, que vinha essencialmente do comunismo.

In America the rich man's objective never will be to make the poor man rich.

And a woman needs a man to protect her from other men. Well, women used to. . . . Things have changed. Women are in the middle East, fighting and protecting men now.

Today, more than 50 percent of American adults are single, and 31 million—roughly one out of every seven adults—live alone.

Spending time in a market-driven social setting—even a relatively inexpensive fast-food restaurant or pastry shop—requires paying for the privilege.

In civically flourishing societies, the people remember that the system is healthiest and most robust when power emerges from the bottom up and the middle out, not the top down. In such societies, the people recognize that it is not only fair that power be circulated widely; it is also wise.

They share a vision of a society where more people are able to claim and create more power—for themselves, by themselves—against the encroachments of others. And they now share an experience that teaches them that it is both possible and necessary to create power: to activate people who very reasonably could believe that the deck is so stacked against them that there's no point in getting involved.

The impact of McDonald's on the way we live today is hard to overstate. The Golden Arches are now more widely recognized than the Christian cross.

Americans not only smoke more marijuana but also imprison more people for marijuana than any other western industrialized nation.

The current demand for marijuana and pornography is deeply revealing. Here are two commodities that Americans publicly abhor, privately adore, and buy in astonishing amounts.

Women are their own worst enemies. And guilt is the main weapon of self-torture…Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.

The astounding energy of post-menopausal women (promised by Margaret Mead) is here, but the optimism to fuel it is not. The world seems ever more surely in the grip of materialism and surfaces. Image, image, image is all it sees. As an image, I'm definitely getting blurry.

It is heresy in America to embrace any way of life except as half of a couple. Solitude is un-American.

Human beings are naturally hierarchical beasts. Democracy is not their native religion.

I had forgotten how awful it was to be a woman alone--the leering glances, the catcalls, the offers of help which you dared not accept for fear of incurring a sexual debt. The awful sense of vulnerability. No wonder I had gone from man to man and always wound up married. How could I have left Bennett? How could I have forgotten?

Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

once becoming a mother, a woman might be radicalized in her feminism. She had a greater stake in saving the earth from male politicians. She had a greater stake in education and health, in the environment, in all social policy. She finally understood the way our society makes children and mothers the lowers of priorities. ...... I was hardly mellowed by the maternal transformation. If anything, my feminism grew more fierce.

Again we are re-minded of the fate of women in patriarchal society. How can we find the truth about their lives when most of the books were written by men?

Though most of the punished witches were neither propertied nor powerful, the constant reminder of what patriarchal power could do to uppity, solitary, or rebellious women must have gone a long way toward keeping the mass of women in their place.

It is vital that we try to see religious myths not as immutable go- (or goddess-) given truths, but as reflections of human society and fear.

Being unmarried in a man's world was such a hassle that anything had to be better. Marriage was better. But not much. Damned clever, I thought, how men had made life so intolerable for single women that most would gladly embrace even bad marriages instead.

The real trouble about women is that they must always go on trying to adapt themselves to men's theories of women. —D. H. Lawrence

The virtues about marriage were mostly negative virtues. Being unmarried in a man's world was such a hassle that anything had to be better. Marriage was better. But not much. Damned clever, I thought, how men had made life so intolerable for single women that most would gladly embrace even bad marriages instead.

Femeile sunt singurul grup exploatat din istorie a carui neputinta a fost idealizata.