Quotes About Society

Justice is only what a "culture," meaning a shifting majority of people, say it is, with a dollop of respect for "human rights" spread on top, without intellectual foundation, and without any connection with virtue and duty.

Rome was an evolutionary society, not a revolutionary one. Constitutional crises tended to lead not to the abolition of previous arrangements but to the accretion of new layers of governance.

Perhaps a third of the population of Italy were slaves in the late Republic—as many as three million people.

dozens of tribes and much given to piracy and brigandage.

He understood that he needed the confidence of the people and, as the clear-eyed philosopher Aristotle put it, the "confidence of the people [depended] on hostility to the rich.

According to Plutarch, Cleopatra and Antony now dissolved their celebrated Society of Inimitable Livers and instituted another, which was at least its equal in elegance, luxury and extravagance, and which they called the Order of the Inseparable in Death. Their friends joined it on the understanding that they would end their lives together, and they set themselves to charm away the days with a succession of exquisite supper parties.

Although sleeping with men was apparently not to his taste, Octavian had no objection to multifarious lifestyles among members of his circle.

the Roman state was remarkably nonbureaucratic; with no police force

Capitalism has disappeared as an object of study, just when it has removed any alternative to itself.

On election season politicos dawn their timber boots and red handkerchiefs. Many claim salt of the earth roots every time they eat a watermelon, but they never bite the bitterness of the rind. Everyone likes a good show and the politics of poverty never disappoint.

You do now have one in three people, as shown by the famous Carlton Monarchy debate poll, saying they want to get rid of the Monarchy. That was unthinkable even three, four years ago.

a person with a position in society has responsibilities

No, the events which I am about to describe were simply too monstrous, too shocking to appear in print. They still are. It is no exaggeration to suggest that they would tear apart the entire fabric of society and, particularly at a time of war, this is something I cannot risk.

You know, they say in America that the average child sees eight thousand murders before they leave elementary school. Makes you think, doesn't it.

You know the trouble with this part of the world? It's full of retired bankers and lawyers with too much time on their hands.

That's how it is with the modern police these days. They've made so many cutbacks, there's no-one left to do the job.

There are some people who argue that we are too sensitive these days, that because we're so afraid of causing offence, we no longer engage in any serious sort of argument at all. But that's how it is. It's why political chat-shows on television have become so very boring.

As for myself, I felt nothing but pity for Marc Bellamy. I'd been through the private-education system myself – another version of the full English – and knew only too well how the casual cruelty and the pack mentality that he had described could stay with you for the rest of your life.

and it wasn't even as if he did anything to deserve it. He just inherited it from his father and his father before him. This is 1955, for heaven's sake. Not the Middle Ages! Of course, it doesn't help having the bloody Tories still in power but you'd have thought we'd have moved away from the days when people were given wealth and power simply because of an accident of birth.

The houses round here don't have numbers. They're too fucking posh for that.

They think, always, that they are cleverer than they really are, that they have the ability to defeat the police, the rule of law, the very essence of society in order to achieve their ends.

This is 1955, for heaven's sake. Not the Middle Ages! Of course, it doesn't help having the bloody Tories still in power but you'd have thought we'd have moved away from the days when people were given wealth and power simply because of an accident of birth.

It's been shut down now, part of a brilliant scheme to close half of London's police stations and reduce uniformed officers on the street that has seen a surge in knife crime and made it impossible to use a mobile phone without the risk of it being snatched by thieves on motorbikes.

in America that the average child sees eight thousand murders before they leave elementary school.