Quotes About Society

It is opposition to economic orthodoxy that leads us into austerity and cuts. But it is also a thirst for something more communal, more participative. That, to me, is what is interesting in this process.

I'm not thirsty. I'm not a pop star. I don't want to reign over all forever... I don't want to be famous! It makes me feel sick, the thought of being a famous person. It's just not me.

It would have been so awesome to be born in the Thirties and be in your prime in the Fifties. Except for the whole being black thing, obviously!

Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.

I think we have some serious problems now, but, if you look back over the last thirty or forty years that my book deals with, I think we are in better shape now than we would have been if all of those cases had not come down.

Thirty is not an age for a woman anymore.

I would love to do espionage like 'The Thomas Crown Affair,' that kind of thing. And I've always had a fascination with madams. It's interesting to me what that institution is like, how those women are.

This whole thing with Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas happened during my first year of college. It was a cross-section of race and politics and gender that I feel is still going on today.

Just think how much poorer we would be today if the world would have had half as many people in the 19th century as it actually did. You can get rid of Thomas Edison or Louis Pasteur; take your pick.

The Industrial Revolution was another of those extraordinary jumps forward in the story of civilization.

When you're a girl, you have to be everything, You have to be dope at what you do, but you have to be super sweet, and you have to be sexy, and you have to be this and you have to be that and you have to be nice, and you have to - it's like, I can't be all of those things at once. I'm a human being.

I don't think we're crumbling as a civilization, but this is not our finest hour, and it's good to be mindful that we're all susceptible to fall and to look at what are the earmarks of a civilization on the wane. What are they - destruction of the environment? Conspicuous consumption? Heard of those?

Even though the society that Marx foresaw is far from being an historical reality, Marxism has penetrated so deeply in history that we are all Marxists, one way or another, even unknowingly.

No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them; and though different men may sometimes find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will never make it their pleasure.

The response of anybody interested in liberty is that we all have a say and the ability to have an argument is exactly what liberty is, even though it may never be resolved. In any authoritarian society the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside he will come after you.

All humans make mistakes. But there is no room or allowance in the fevered world of conspiracy theorists for mistakes, human errors, anomalies, or plain incompetence, though the latter, from the highest levels on down, is endemic to our society.

Even though I am from Jersey, not to put Jersey down, I like Jersey, but I think I'm more cultured.

It's double talk and double standards. It's like, be honest, but don't be too honest. Look fresh-faced and young, but don't tell us how you got there. God forbid you have plastic surgery, even though we're telling you, 'Oh, you look old.' Be a career woman, but also, why aren't you having kids? Are you some kind of cold shrew?

Kindness and compassion aren't political qualities even though they get politicized.

In the information society, nobody thinks. We expect to banish paper, but we actually banish thought.

From getting good grades in school, to thinking about getting a good career and settling down, we all have been running a rat race. We always thought that we were doing it for ourselves but actually we were doing it for others. Like, I realized, I never had time for myself.

Once you 'got' Pop, you could never see a sign again the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again.

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

Like George Sand, the feminism of the present day asserts the right of free thought against the creed of authority in every field; the solidarity of mankind and the cause of peace against the patriotism of militarism; social reform against the existing relations of society.