Quotes About Society

Max asked, 'Why death, do you think?' 'The Iroquois say that the world was too full, so the men and women got together, separately, to find an answer. The men came up with the idea of not having any more children. But the women refused to give up having babies. Death was their answer.' Max nodded. He took a deep breath. It felt like he hadn't breathed like that in month, maybe years.

Elizabeth walked past just as Mrs. Ferguson, pulling down her wide-brimmed hat, announced that teenagers today were the most inconsiderate creatures she had ever seen. 'I'm afraid I have to agree with you,' Elizabeth had heard her twin say mournfully, clearly distinguishing herself from the inconsiderate teenagers milling all around them.

Though what is as sexy, as sweetly taboo as money? So secret, so unspeakable even among dear friends? How much did daddy leave you? How much did you get for that painting? How did you buy that fancy car with no visible means of employment? I have friends who tell me about every kinky sex act, the lies they tell, the crimes they commit, their intestinal complaints. But they shut up like bad shellfish when you ask what they paid for their house.

Who would you rather live with, a bunch of bonobos feeling good? Or chimpanzees eating each other's babies? Or humans waterboarding each other and destroying the planet?

This generation seems to see children as a financial burden and responsibility to be avoided.

Did freedom have to mean abolishing common decency?

Voi abitate a West Egg disse con fare sprezzante. Conosco qualcuno laggiù. Io non conosco nessuno. Dovete conoscere Gatsby. Gatsby? chiese Daisy. Che Gatsby?

Peace is not the norm; peace is rare, and where we do manage to institutionalize it in a human society, it's usually because we've been intelligently pessimistic about human proclivities, and found a way to work with the grain of them in a system of intense mutual suspicion like the U.S. Constitution, a document which assumes that absolutely everybody will be corrupt and power-hungry given half a chance.

Why isn't he dead?' he said eventually. 'That is a good question. After all, meaning well hasn't been a completely adequate shield in this century of ours.

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive.

Think on it, Chani: the princess will have the name, yet she'll live as less than a concubine - never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she's bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine - history will call us wives.

Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?

Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police are effective. They're a kind of job insurance.

A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob.

I point out to you, Marcus Claire Luyseyal, a lesson from past over-machined societies which you appear not to have learned. The devices themselves condition the users to employ each other the way they employ machines.

You can't build politics on love, he said. People aren't concerned with love; it's too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos.

People want order, this kind or some other. They sit in the prison of their hungers and see that war has become the sport of the rich. That's a dangerous form of sophistication. It's disorderly.

Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police are effective.

Does a population have informed consent when that population is not taught the inner workings of its monetary system, and then is drawn, all unknowing, into economic adventures?

the drowning man who climbs on your shoulders to save himself is understandable—except when you see it happen in the drawing room.

Em tempos, os homens entregavam o pensamento às máquinas, na esperança de que isso os libertasse. Mas só permitiu que outros homens com máquinas os escravizassem

The limit of the law is the limit of enforcement—the real limit of organized society.

No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals.

No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/ human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals.   —FROM THE TLEILAXU GODBUK