Quotes About Society

When Norman O. Brown said that Western society since Newton, no matter how scientific or secular it claims to be, is still as "religious" as any other, this is what he meant: "civilized" society is a hopeful belief and protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal.

There is no point in lingering on the fallacies of the revolutionaries of unrepression; one could go on and on, but everything would come back to the same basic thing: the impossibility of living without repression.

He can even give his body over to the tribe, the state, the embracing magical umbrella of the elders and their symbols; that way it will no longer be a dangerous negation for him. But there is no real difference between a childish impossibility and an adult one; the only thing that the person achieves is a practiced self-deceit—what we call the "mature" character.

Socialization means the formation of human beings out of helpless, dependent animal matter.

When the average person…cannot hide his failure to be his own hero, then he bogs down in the failure of depression and terrible guilt.

The hope and belief is that the things that man creates in society are of lasting worth and meaning, that they outlive or outshine death and decay, that man and his products count.

Better not to be oneself, better to live tucked into others, embedded in a safe framework of social and cultural obligations and duties.

Society itself is a codified hero system, which means that society everywhere is a living myth of the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning.

freedom is dangerous. If you follow it too willingly it threatens to pull you into the air; if you give it up too wholly, you become a prisoner of necessity. The safest thing is to toe the mark of what is socially possible.

the characteristics the modern mind prides itself on are precisely those of madness.

When Norman O. Brown said that Western society since Newton, no matter how scientific or secular it claims to be, is still as religious as any other, this is what he meant: civilized society is a hopeful belief and protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal. In this sense everything that man does is religious and heroic, and yet in danger of being fictitious and fallible.

Society itself is a codified hero system, which means that society everywhere is a living myth of the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning. Every society thus is a "religion" whether it thinks so or not: Soviet "religion" and Maoist "religion" are as truly religious as are scientific and consumer "religion," no matter how much they may try to disguise themselves by omitting religious and spiritual ideas from their lives.

The science of man has shown us that society will always be composed of passive subjects, powerful leaders, and enemies upon whom we project our guilt and self-hatred.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be

Do you know how an ugly woman feels? Do you know what it is to be ugly all your life and inside to feel that you are beautiful? It is very rare.

Religion is the opium of the poor

I don't know who made the laws; But I know there ain't no law that you got to go hungry.

You have never heard me talk much. But an intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools.

The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

But then we did not think of ourselves as poor. We did not accept it. we thought we were superior people and other people that we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich.

If the people show too much courage on this world, the society must choke them to break them - and by that, of course, kill them. The society breaks everyone, but after that many become stronger on that broken places. And those it cannot broke, it kills them.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the stupid and uneducated aspired to be thought intelligent and cultured people doing their best to feign stupidity.

Those damn .357's are hard to get now because draft-dodging FBI's have to use them to hunt down draft-dodgers," the man said. "But a man has to fire a shot sometime or he doesn't know how he is shooting.