Quotes About Society

What is a culture? A culture is what approves or disapproves of the actions in its midst. Yet how rare for approval to be unanimous.

Who can a monster blame for being red?

But if one says: I cannot come because it is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it—like a secret vice.

There were girls at school whose families grew to a robust five or six. There were girls with seven or eight-which was thought a little enthusiastic - and then there were the pathetic ones like me, who had parents that were just helpless to it, and bred as naturally as they might shit.

It was a delicate business, being the Not Wife.

If Kafka had been a woman, then Gregor Samsa would not have turned into an insect, he would not have had to. Gregor would be Gretel and she would wake up one morning pregnant. She would try to roll over and discover she was stuck on her back. She would wave her little hands uselessly in the air.

Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn't matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.

I would give my life for this country, but this country would do nothing for my wife and child had I died.

Russians are trying to figure out who they are and where they fit into the world.

What people are afraid of can tell us a lot about society.

There is no singular meaning of wife. That is the point. That is its meaning. To see the wife fully through a multi-faceted lens is one of the central challenges facing society in the twenty-first century. To do this, new scripts are required that employ wife as a verb and as a gender-neutral concept. These are essential if we are to create necessary new narratives, new ways of living as women and men together.

We do not believe that capitalism, or any economic system, is the cause of female oppression, nor do we believe that female oppression will disappear as a result of purely economic revolution.

Older women have the experience and maturity to offer the greatest service and skills to society of any segment of our population. They are at the peak of their promise. …Since we are the natural care-takers in this world, I feel the greatest good that women can do is help the environmental movement." Anne LaBastille, Woodswoman III

We must not inflict life on children who will be resented we must not inflict unwanted children on society.

I got a lot of things that society had promised would make me whole and fulfilled - all the things that the culture tells you from preschool on will quiet the throbbing anxiety inside you - stature, the respect of colleagues, maybe even a kind of low-grade fame.

School-age boys had begun to define their life aims in terms of the occupations, and the prestige of the occupations, that lay ahead. They were asking, 'What is my work to be?' while the girls were wondering, 'Who will my husband be?

What a commentary on civilization, when being alone is being suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it — like a secret vice.

I never confess to being a widow. Widows are thought to be unlucky in some societies, while in others, the local men get over-optimistic ideas.)

The expenses of government, having for their object the interest of all, should be borne by everyone, and the more a man enjoys the advantages of society, the more he ought to hold himself honored in contributing to those expenses.

France is not England, and nowhere do they differ more than in their attitude towards intellectuals, toward women, and toward those who happen to be both.

Some women marry houses.

Kind Sir: Lost and of your same kind I have turned around twice with my eyes sealed and the woods were white and my night mind saw such strange happenings, untold and unreal. And opening my eyes, I am afraid of course to look—this inward look that society scorns— Still, I search in these woods and find nothing worse than myself, caught between the grapes and the thorns.

All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children. [...] I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can't build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out.

When girls set their sights on a career, they have to work it out of their systems. Otherwise the kitchen sink gets to be a kind of sacrificial altar.