Quotes About Society

If you ask an economist what's driven economic growth, it's been major advances in things that mattered - the mechanization of farming, mass manufacturing, things like that. The problem is, our society is not organized around doing that.

We need a new and positive narrative that defies the negativity and transforms our ageing populations from a problem into an asset.

I'm almost a feminist and believe if a girl wants to do something, she should be able to do it in the same way that a man is able to, which is sometimes a problem in our country.

I have a big problem with people who glamorize dumbness and demonize education and intellect. And I'm giving a pretty good description of Sarah Palin right now.

I think society is both something that's very real and very powerful, but on the whole quite problematic.

Ultimately, policing in and of itself is problematic.

The ability to convince people of the wackiest notions - and both parties can do it - it's part of the dumbing down of America that's really highly problematic.

Human beings should be held accountable. Leave God alone. He has enough problems.

Japan's biggest problems are conservatism and cowardice.

Democracy's got endless problems and faults and dangers, but it's certain the alternatives are not better.

I think there's always going to be a problem dealing with firearms, with knives. It's the animal we are that cause the problems.

A politician finds anything to do with racial problems far more frightening than a gun.

I think ageing demographics is a bigger issue in China than people think. And the problems it creates should be become evident as early as 2016.

We know we need civilization and laws and procedures, but isn't it frustrating? Wouldn't it be great if we could just do what we needed to do?

We so often tend to think our democracies are ruled by procedures and laws, but they are also governed by implicit rules and assumptions and one of them is the ability to feel shame - that you can be shamed.

Don't do what I did and think you need to have these procedures to make you look more attractive. Don't look at the implant and think it will make you beautiful and everyone will really love you.

I'm basically an optimist because I do think there's this historical modernisation process, and by and large it's been very beneficial to people. But there are blips. History doesn't proceed in a linear way.

Paradoxically Americans are becoming both more obese and more nutrient deficient at the same time. Obese children eating processed foods are nutrient depleted and increasingly get scurvy and rickets, diseases we thought were left behind in the 19th and 20th centuries.

I see a lot of patterns in our behavior as a nation that parallel a lot of other historical processes.

Pretty soon we'll have robots in our society, you're going to have a lot of automated processes that used to be done by people - this is happening. Society and technology is changing so fast, and the impact of the change on society and technology is global, not local.

I can't help but feel that trying to locate a universal femininity in either consumer culture or particular bodily functions serves as a way to opt out of dealing with the multiple processes that impede our full participation in society.

I believe that nothing enjoys a higher estate in our society than the right given by the First and Fourteenth Amendments freely to practice and proclaim one's religious convictions.

The gradual decline of a society is often a self-induced process of trying to meet ever-expanding appetites, rather than a physical inability to produce past levels of food and fuel, or to maintain adequate defense.

I try to support stories that enable us to see the difficulties in our society and the challenges we face, which is why I've also produced documentaries like 'Brick City' and 'Serving Life.'