Quotes About Society

As far as most people are concerned, art may be acceptable as a profession, but certainly not as an occupation.

Members of society must obey the law because they personally believe that its commands are justified.

Notice, by extension, that in a democracy those committed to non-procreation could never, in the long run, prevail politically against those committed to procreation.

Life is meaningless, but it also has meaning—or, more accurately, meanings. There is no such thing as the meaning of life. Many different meanings are possible. One can transcend the self and make a positive mark on the lives of others in myriad ways. These include nurturing and teaching the young, caring for the sick, bringing relief to the suffering, improving society, creating great art or literature, and advancing knowledge.

The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.

THOSE WHO STUDY the rise and fall of civilizations learn that no shortcoming has been as surely fatal to republics as a dearth of public virtue, the unwillingness of those who govern to place the value of their society above personal interest.

Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it is true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.

It will be a great day for America, incidentally, when we begin to eat bread again, instead of the blasphemous and tasteless foam rubber that we have substituted for it. And I am not being frivolous here, either. Something very sinister happens to the people of a country when they begin to distrust their own reactions as deeply as they do here, and become as joyless as they have become.

I don't think the negro problem can be discussed coherently without bearing in mind its context; its context being the history, traditions, customs, the moral assumptions and preoccupations of the country; in short, the general social fabric. Appearances to the contrary, no one in America escapes its effects and everyone in America bears some responsibility for it.

Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.

We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; and yet is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed.

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

All politics are based on the indifference of the majority.

So the economic benefit of higher education in arts subjects appears to be nil. In fact, it is a luxury in the sense that it costs money rather than yielding it. It is a luxury which is paid for out of general taxation, including taxation of the poor.

The unemployed themselves suffer most from unemployment. But the rest of us are affected too. We pay for the benefits, the hospitalisation of those who become unwell, the policing. We may become victims of the crimes and we receive the everyday incivility.

In 1931 there were three crimes a year for every police officer. In 2001 there were 44.

Karl Marx disse que a religião é o ópio do povo, mas estava errado. A religião não é o ópio do povo, ela é o incendiário do povo! Nunca o mal é feito tão bem como quando é feito em nome da religião.

Influence must ever be in proportion to property; and it is right it should.

In the long run, people have more to fear from governments than from terrorists. Terrorists come and go, but power-hungry politicians will always be with us.

Attention Deficit Democracy produces the attitudes, ignorance and arrogance that pave the way to political collapse.

People have been taught to expect far more from government than from freedom.

The surest effect of exalting government is to make it easier for some people to drag others down.

The more that democracy is assumed to be inevitable, the more likely it will self-destruct.