Quotes About Society

And then, as we grew into young women, we realised it was not love, but marriage that was the destiny waiting for us.

What economic libralisation needs, if it is to succeed , is a general acceptance that reforms are for the general good, that they might seem to help some more than others, but that in the long run everyone will benefit from them. Such attitude is far from being realized

Indeed there were outstanding examples of good governance in India at the time, notably the Travancore kingdom, which in 1819 became the

One of the more difficult questions I used to find myself being asked as a United Nations official, especially when I had been addressing a generalist audience, was: What is the single most important thing that can be done to improve the world?... If I had to pick one thing we must do above all else, I now offer a two-word mantra: Educate girls.

As Manu S. Pillai acidly observes, 'In other words, there is nothing a quiet ghar wapsi cannot solve when it comes to the building of a good dharmocracy.'90

What the hell does this say about India? Appearances are more important than truths. Gossip is more potent than facts. Loyalty is all one way, from the woman to the man. And when society stacks up all the odds against a woman, she'd better not count on the man's support. She has no way out other than to end her own life. And I'm in love with an Indian. I must be crazy.

By the early 1800s, India had been reduced from a land of artisans, traders, warriors and merchants, functioning in thriving and complex commercial networks, into an agrarian society of peasants and moneylenders.

a highly developed country of the past, in an advanced state of decay).

Of course, sir. Since royalty never, ever falls for a commoner. Your shaykhah is so very royal, after all.

It is only when women start to organize in large numbers that we become a political force, and begin to move towards the possibility of a truly democratic society in which every human being can be brave, responsible, thinking and diligent in the struggle to live at once freely and unselfishly. Such a democracy would be communism, and is beyond our present imagining.

Back home the election was over; the country had a new president: 'Mr Roosevelt' he was called at first, then 'Roosevelt,' then 'that Roosevelt,' and finally just 'he' or 'him' by mouths that twisted bitterly on the pronoun, for the westering boats were crowded with expatriates—"A traitor to his class," they said.

a continuing tension between power and authority: power was dependent upon organizing cooperation, enlisting the generality of human and material resources in society, while authority claimed to derive from sources said to be rare or special—from Holy Scripture, from God

Each of them, withdrawn and apart, is like a stranger to the destiny of all the others: his children and his particular friends form the whole human species for him; as for dwelling with his fellow citizens, he is beside them but he does not see them. . . .

The lesson of Hobbes and Tocqueville can be boiled down to a brief but chilling dictum: concentrated power, whether of a Leviathan, a benevolent despotism, or a superpower, is impossible without the support of a complicitous citizenry that willingly signs on to the covenant, or acquiesces, or clicks the "mute button.

The two constitutions—one for expansion, the other for containment—form the two sides of inverted totalitarianism.

In contrast, inverted totalitarianism is only in part a state-centered phenomenon. Primarily it represents the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry.

Aristotle noted that leisure was a necessary condition in the politics of a good society.31 Or, as an early twentieth-century populist rephrased it, "Raise less corn and more hell.

How is it possible to have a "natural harmony" of selfish interests? Smith's answer: an "invisible hand" guided the individual selfish actor "to promote an end which was no part of his intention." "It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of society which [the individual] has in view.

At the same time rulers were exhorted to protect and promote the common good of society and the well-being of all of their subjects.

Once the battle lines between communism and the "free society" were drawn, the economy became untouchable for purposes other than "strengthening" capitalism.

The current censorship of popular protest against Superpower and empire serves to isolate democratic resistance, to insulate society from hearing dissonant voices, and to hurry the process of depoliticization.

What was the value of "values"? To obscure more fundamental issues and to divide society along ideological lines rather than class conflicts: the religiously obedient Catholic worker, the evangelical African American, the church- and family-oriented Hispanic, the struggling white family with a son in the military because he aspired to go to college: all vote for the party trumpeting values that impose virtually no cost on its affluent and corporate beneficiaries and their heirs.33

In classical totalitarian regimes it was assumed that total power demanded that the entirety of society's institutions, practices, and beliefs had to be dictated from above and coordinated (gleichgeschaltet), that total power was achievable only through the control of everything from the top.

Managed democracy is centered on containing electoral politics; it is cool, even hostile toward social democracy beyond promoting literacy, job training, and other essentials for a society struggling to survive in the global economy. Managed democracy is democracy systematized. The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed.