Quotes About Society

We have always asked too much of women in this country. They hold up the sky on their shoulders.

It is undoubtedly the case that the practice of the virtues makes one happier. We've somewhat lost sight of that essential truth, now that we, as a society, admire selfishness and vanity so much.

One did not walk around the town with one's birth certificate stuck on one's back; why then should clothes have their labels on the outside? It was a very vulgar display, she felt

It did not matter in the least what bed you were born in: what counted was what you were inside. People in England, she suspected, sometimes just did not grasp that and that was a pity: their society was more stratified than Scotland's; they needed to read Robert Burns's A Man's a Man for a' That, she felt, because that said all that had to be said on that subject. If you understood what Burns was saying in that poem, then you understood how Scotland felt—at heart.

But that was then and this was now, when it seemed that people were different. They put up with less; they were more impatient than earlier generations. Why? Because now we were used to getting what we wanted – and getting it quickly, whether it was something ordered online, or happiness itself .

It was perfectly possible to portray scientific knowledge as socially determined – and therefore not true in any real sense – when one was safe on the ground in Paris; but would you ask the same question in a jet aircraft at thirty-five thousand feet, when that same knowledge underpinned the very engineering that was keeping one up in the air?

People have been becoming more traditionally built over recent years," he had pointed out.

just like the affairs of the adult world--complicated rules and a history.

was particularly hard for women now, when there were so many children left without

A society that undermined its teachers and their authority only dug away at its own sure foundations.

Men talked about things that happened in the world, about events; women, by contrast, talked amongst themselves about being in the world. The difference was crucial.

Look at what very ordinary people have lost, and think about that for a moment. What has happened to working-class communities in Scotland? To miners, for example. To fishermen? Who? You might well ask. To men and women who work with their hands? Who again? These people are being swept away by globalisation. Swept away. Now they're all so demoralised that they're caught in the culture of permanent sick notes. And who speaks for the young Scottish male, as a matter of interest?

No, I mean it. People think that everybody has been involved with somebody else, whatever their nature. They find it inconceivable that one might go through life never finding anybody. But you know something, Caroline? I think that's far more common than you would ever imagine. There are plenty of people in that position.

She is a good housemother, that one," said Mma Ramotswe. Mma Potokwane agreed. "Whenever I hear people say that the country is going to the dogs—and there are such people, you know, Mma…

You can't have a cohesive society without a shared culture.

Nobody challenged men openly, of course, but when women spoke now amongst themselves" (pg.33)

Society may be post-Christian, but could hardly ignore its Judeo-Christian past; we did not, after all, come from nowhere.

Charity begins at home. Was that a narrow, selfish adage or was it simply an inescapable, bedrock fact of life in human society? Does the one in need on your doorstep have a greater claim than the one in need in a distant country--if the level of need in each case is exactly the same?

People, she said, generally wanted other people to believe the things they did, and would punish those who deviated...There were many such snares placed in the way of the unwary, and the consequence of inattention to the enforced wisdom of the times could be a medieval public shaming.

Nobody talks about respectable people any longer," said Angus. "Perhaps that's because it has become unfashionable to be respectable." "Respectable people disapprove of things," mused Domenica. "And Edinburgh used to be very disapproving. Now it's only moderately so.

Light-minded society mercilessly persecutes in reality what it allows in theory

We live without power of law, like flocks of ravens they come and sweep over the land.

es insoportable ver solo ante si la larga hilera de comidas, mirar la vida como una ceremonia y seguir a la solemne multitud, sin compartir con ella las opiniones generales ni las pasiones.

cleavage is a liability in this climate