Quotes About Society

Literature offers not just a window into the culture of diverse regions, but also the society, the politics; it's the only place where we can keep track of ideas.

The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony.

This has been the new normal since September 11. Everyone knows, but nobody says, that if something happens again, the elite consensus in this country, and the overwhelming consensus of the citizenry, will be to pitch the Bill of Rights out the window and start rounding folks up.

Books such as 'The Rules' and 'He's Just Not That Into You' need to go out of the window.

Even Tom Sawyer had a girlfriend and to talk about adults without talking about their sex drives is like talking about a window without glass.

The '70s were a different time as far as parenting was concerned. People left their kids in the car with the windows cracked while they went to the grocery store.

I joined a gym when I was 11, agreed to seeing a dietitian aged 15, and I remember being a teenager and going to shops, only to find that as a size 16, the clothes were hidden at the back or on different floors well away from the shop windows.

In spring 2011, I was arrested for allowing my son, then 4, to wait in a car with the windows open for a few minutes.

All these fifty-year-old guys wearing baseball caps and shorts and acting like children. It winds me up. Men don't have to take responsibility anymore. Most of the guys I know would punch me on the nose for saying this, but maybe we do have to bring back conscription.

Big ideas, big ambitious projects need to be embedded within culture at a level deeper than the political winds. It needs to be deeper than the economic fluctuations that could turn people against an expensive project because they're on an unemployment line and can't feed their families.

Like the winds that we come we know not whence and blow whither soever they list, the forces of society are derived from an obscure and distant origin. They arise before the date of philosophy, from the instincts, not the speculations of men.

As a society, I think we express our cultural mores through our politics. We're trying constantly to figure out what's OK and what's not OK. And it's hard, because our society is constantly buffeted by gale force winds of technology. Things are always changing.

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.

Wine is wonderful stuff. But so many people are put off by the snobbery of it.

Don't believe those who claim that only left wing parties really care about employment.

Whether it's 'Veep' or 'Homeland' or 'The West Wing' - which is a more idealised version of democracy - people are fascinated by politics.

My fellow Americans, you have to decide what kind of country you want to live in. If you want a you're on your own, winner take all society you should support the Republican ticket. If you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibilities - a 'we're all in it together' society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Silicon Valley today is populated mostly by people who would consider themselves winners of the traditional race. This causes the exclusion of the voices that are vital to a round, robust society. It's beyond gentrification.

The more that everyone has access to the same educational opportunities, the more society will tend to accept some receiving disproportionate rewards. After all, they themselves have a chance to be winners.

There are winners and there are losers. And as much as we would like to help the losers, if we do it in the way that directs the limited capital of the society to support the low-productivity parts of the economy, it means that the rest of the economy - our overall standard of living - will not rise as much as it could.

And from a military school which taught me that to fit into society, you can't just do anything you damn well please because it will suit you. And that it's much better to be with the winners than it is with the losers.

We need an equal opportunity society, one in which government does not see its job as picking winners and losers. Where do you go if you want special favors? Government. Where do you go if you want a tax break? Government. Where do you go if you want a handout? Government. This must stop.

I feel very happy that the society has matured and parents have opened up to their girls studying more and becoming working professionals and becoming bread winners for themselves.

I think the problem is that there has been a kind of backlash against feminism. I think women just didn't really see themselves winning that fight, and I think that probably led to a lot women feeling trapped in a perpetual cycle of disappointment - trying to be feminists and failing to be.