Quotes About Society

Why do we celebrate the monsters, the destroyers, the killers among us?

Never slam a car door. According to the Westchester elite, it's a heinous crime, as heartless as kicking a puppy.

There's this expectation that we should all be sexual beings, but the fact is, not all of us are, particularly.

You can't make people stop loving each other just because a law says it's wrong," I said.

When imagination fails, compassion and humaneness dwindle and atrophy along with it. Unleavened by imagination, the variety and richness of life turn into flat abstractions; people become objects to be manipulated -- with the social consequences we know all too well.

Our people made that choice, the choice to go to Sameness. Before my time, before the previous time, back and back and back. We relinquished color when we relinquished sunshine and did away with difference. We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others.

Life here is so orderly, so predictable-so painless. It's what they've chosen.

Two children—one male, one female—to each family unit. It was written very clearly in the rules.

Definitely not safe," Jonas said with certainty. "What if they were allowed to choose their own mate? And chose wrong? "Or what if," he went on, almost laughing at the absurdity, "they chose their own jobs?" "Frightening, isn't it?" The Giver said. Jonas

Two children—one male, one female—to each family unit.

Birthmother was an important job, if lacking in prestige.

Sometimes I wish they'd ask for my wisdom more often—there are so many things I could tell them; things I wish they would change. But they don't want change. Life here is so orderly, so predictable—so painless. It's what they've chosen.

a contributing citizen to be released from the community was a final decision, a terrible punishment, an overwhelming statement of failure.

There were only two occasions of release which were not punishment. Release of the elderly, which was a time of celebration for a life well and fully lived; and release of a newchild, which always brought a sense of what-could-we-have-done.

joined those who took the pills.

And the nakedness, too. It was against the rules for children or adults to look at another's nakedness; but the rule did not apply to newchildren or the Old.

Never underestimate the human capacity for wishful thinking and willful blindness,' said Miles. Such as a whole society of people who became so wrapped up in avoiding death, they forgot to be alive?

Egalitarians adjust to aristocracies just fine, as long as they get to be the aristocrats.

Lady Peace is the first hostage taken when economic discomfort rises.

From spaceman to caveman in three days," she meditated aloud. "How we imagine our civilization is in ourselves, when it's really in our things.

But why, in God the Father's name, should they want to destroy Athos? Is Cetaganda—controlled by women or something?" A

Am I to form myself into the pattern of a perfect Barrayaran maiden like trying to work a magic spell for absolution? I could spend my whole life working out that ritual and not come to the end of it, damn it!

From spaceman to caveman in three days, she meditated aloud. How we imagine our civilization is in ourselves, when it's really in our things.

It made her furious. All Kareen's courage of endurance had given her nothing. Lady Vorpatril's brave and bloody birth-giving was taken for granted, but whack off some idiot's head and you were really somebody, by God--!