Quotes About Society

Surely a number of such people want to do the right thing, are well-intentioned, but just as surely some do not act from creditable intentions. Some of our elites…professors, journalists, makers of motion pictures and television entertainment, et al.…delight in nihilism and destruction as much as do the random killers in our cities. Their weapons are just different.

Lyndon Johnson's Great Society carried forward what Roosevelt and Truman had begun and accomplished the most thorough-going redistribution of wealth and status in the name of equality that this country had ever experienced.

In short both the things we feel we need and the things available for us to buy depend largely—beyond some point, almost entirely—on the things that others choose to buy.

In 1980, the cost of an average American wedding, adjusted for inflation, was $11,000, a princely sum in most parts of the world even today. But by 2014, that figure had escalated to $30,000, and in Manhattan the average wedding now costs more than $76,000.1

People try to live within their income so they can afford to pay taxes to a government that can't live within its income

Civilization was a relentless war that man was doomed to lose eventually.

Juan Vicente did not marry until the age of 46 when he chose María Concepcion Palacios y Blanco, the beautiful 15-year-old daughter of another prominent family.

You form a society: that limits you. Adopt a name, and you've limited yourself again; draw up a constitution and bylaws and you've made a groove, a rut, that hampers your growth. You think you can fix your course and move straight along it. But sometimes the important thing is to strike out sidewise.

We know how the people of Argentina ruined their country. We know how the people of Venezuela ruined their country. Few Americans know much about the history of Argentina or Venezuela. But if they wish to know how the people of the USA are ruining their own country, all they have to do is look around themselves, including, in most cases, looking in the mirror.

Income inequality has no necessary connection with poverty, the lack of material resources for a decent life, such as adequate food, shelter, and clothing. A society with great income inequality may have no poor people, and a society with no income inequality may have nothing but poor people.

People and their values are almost infinitely diverse, and people will never agree on many elements of social arrangements that might be subjected to uniform rules of governance. Hence, the greater the scope of strictly individual self-determination, the lesser the scope of governance, and the greater the tolerance with which people live and let live among their fellows, the more peaceful and flourishing society will be

Society is not merely a select body of spiritual or intellectual persons, but a great organism composed of all kinds of members, a net containing bad and good.

As the eighteenth century went on, fewer people were actually hanged for capital crimes that they had been convicted of.

In one sense, (Duchamp's) "The Large Glass" is a glimpse into Hell; a peculiarly modernist Hell of repetition and loneliness.

that great condenser of moral chaos, The City.

Political stress is always apt to shrink the private arena and attach it on to the public

I realize that protest paintings are not exactly in vogue, but I've done many.

It is far cheaper to build schoolhouses than prisons, and it is much better to have scholars than convicts.

advances since 1970 have tended to be channeled into a narrow sphere of human activity having to do with entertainment, communications, and the collection and processing of information. For the rest of what humans care about—food, clothing, shelter, transportation, health, and working conditions both inside and outside the home—progress slowed down after 1970,

Chief among these headwinds is the rise of inequality that since 1970 has steadily directed an ever larger share of the fruits of the American growth machine to the top of the income distribution.

This paradox is resolved when we recognize that advances since 1970 have tended to be channeled into a narrow sphere of human activity having to do with entertainment, communications, and the collection and processing of information. For the rest of what humans care about—food, clothing, shelter, transportation, health, and working conditions both inside and outside the home—progress slowed down after 1970, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Our

The combined effects of growing inequality, a faltering education system, demographic headwinds, and the strong likelihood of a fiscal correction imply that the real median disposable income will grow much more slowly in the future than in the past.

Between 1940 and 1970, output per person and output per hour continued to increase rapidly, in part as a result of three of the most important subsidiary spinoffs of IR #2—air conditioning, the interstate highway system, and commercial air transport—while the world of personal entertainment was forever altered by television.

And without shared culture, civilization is doomed.