Quotes About Society

It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history.

I am more grateful now than ever for the way you raised us, teaching us the value of kindness, of education, of independent thinking and liberal ideals, in the face of the fascism that is sweeping our country.

Once in a while a story is spectacular enough to break through and attract media attention, but the swell quickly subsides into the general glut of bad news over which we, as citizens, have so little control.

In those days of the second World War it was still widely believed that women who had just delivered could reasonably be expected to be off their heads. 'Yes, dear,' these meek women said, with a certain mournful importance. 'I was outa me mind. Terrible, really. All me milk went to the brain. I suppose it curdles, like.

The trouble with psychology, said Wexford epigrammatically, 'is that it doesn't take human nature into account.

your own now.

some Haitian gangster-cum-political bigwig. He had seen such characters

I wondered if there were planets where it's okay to murder people. I decided there must be, reminding myself that in war, after all, killers are heroes.

You have to watch your step with women these days, Pops. She could be involved with Yakuza or something. Even some of the girls in my class -- you should hear the stuff they talk about. Fifteen years old, and there's nothing they don't know. We're not in the age of Peace and Love anymore.

True decadence wasn't anything carnal; it was about sacrificing the powerless minority for the sake of the majority.

when beautiful women get angry, it scares people. Ugly women get mad and it's just comical, right?

any pop song in this particular country, when sung by several citizens at once, tended to turn into a mindless celebration devoid of any genuine sense of melancholy.

Men today are such a lonely breed

Allmählich wurde mir klar, warum Frank auf so eine dreiste Weise morden konnte, ohne verhaftet zu werden. Weil in unserem Land niemand Notiz von Fremden nimmt. Ob das in Amerika auch so war?

However, man when he is alone is usually more 'human' than when he is a member of a crowd, an excited mass. Individually we are wiser and better, less inscrutable. Becoming part of a group can change the same quiet, friendly individual into a devil.

The political stage revolves many times faster than the stage of our daily existence. Regimes change, governing parties and their leaders change, but man lives just as he previously had—he still does not have an apartment or a job; the houses are still shabby, and there are potholes in the roads; the arduous task of making ends meet still goes on from dawn to dusk.

It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence.

Those who bore others are the plebians, the mass, the endless train of humanity in general. Those who bore themselves are the elect, the nobility; and how strange it is that those who don't bore themselves usually bore others, while those who do bore themselves amuse others. The people who do not bore themselves are generally those who are busy in the world in one way or another, but that is just why they are the most boring, the most insufferable, of all.

What we call worldliness simply consists of such people who, if one may so express it, pawn themselves to the world.

Equally unthinkable among young men of today is a truly religious renunciation of the world, adhered to with daily self-denial. On the other hand almost any theological student is capable of something far more wonderful. He could found a society with the sole object of saving all those who are lost. The age of great and good actions is past, the present is the age of anticipation when even recognition is received in advance.

If a man had a little button sewn on the inner pocket of his coat 'on principle' his otherwise unimportant and quite serviceable action would become charged with importance--it is not improbable that it would result in the formation of a society.

With the daguerreotype everyone will be able to have their portrait taken—formerly it was only the prominent—and at the same time everything is being done to make us all look exactly the same, so we shall only need one portrait.

Ein Spießbürger ist, wer ein absolutes Verhältnis zu relativen Dingen hat.

In the constant sociability of our age people shudder at solitude to such a degree that they know no other use to put it to but (oh, admirable epigram!) as a punishment for criminals. But after all it is a fact that in our age it is a crime to have spirit, so it is natural that such people, the lovers of solitude, are included in the same class with criminals.