Quotes About Society

The common wealth has been used to build highways, develop the Internet and the satellite system, uphold the banking system, regulate the stock market, and support the court system, which guarantees contracts. No business functioning in the market could exist

To a large extent, corporations govern us and run our lives—for their profit, not ours. The list could go on and on.

Myth 7: Everyone Can Pull Himself or Herself Up by the Bootstraps.

Finally, there is the conservative view of the moral hierarchy. As we have seen, the rich and those who can take care of themselves are considered more moral than the poor and those who need help. But moral superiority on a wider scope is central to conservative thought.

In short, the moral hierarchy is an implicit part of the culture wars.

New ideas are never entirely new. They must make use of ideas already present in the culture. No conspiracy of the ultrarich explains why conservative ideas make sense to people and what sense they make. Fourth

In the system of conservative moral categories, government regulation falls under interference with the pursuit of self-interest by people trying to make a living, people using their self-discipline to become self-reliant (and, if possible, rich). These are the good people in our society. We want to encourage people like them and it is wrong to put roadblocks in their way. The

Virtue is to be rewarded—with power. God therefore wants a hierarchical society in which there are moral authorities who should be obeyed in each domain: individual power, global power, financial power, social power.

In short, the private depends on the public.

In the United States, in 1976 the top 1 percent had 19.9 percent of the wealth. In 2010, the top 1 percent had 35.4 percent of the wealth. In 2010, the top 5 percent had 63 percent of the wealth; and the top 20 percent had 88.9 percent of the wealth. That left the bottom 80 percent with 11.1 percent of the wealth.

The private depends on the public. Public resources make private life possible.

But for conservatives, the very idea that the private depends on the public is anathema—immoral.

In contemporary America, politics and personhood are inseparable—and apparently moving in a conservative direction.

When the United States was founded, politics and personhood had come together, but in the progressive direction. Historian Lynn Hunt at UCLA goes through the history in detail in her book Inventing Human Rights: A History.

Connect the private-depends-on-the-public concept to something that conservatives will understand: freedom.

Public resources allow for freedom in case after case, opening up all kinds of opportunities in life. It is the freedom that public resources afford that make them central to democracy. Saying it right—and saying it over and over—is advice that can be applied to issue after issue.

Women are inherently told their bodies are objects, so that's how we treat them.

Women are just as violently minded as men are, but with men, it's taken for granted.

Our experience shows - and survey after survey reveals - institutions are run better, communities are healthier when women are involved in solving the challenges of our society. Equal representation does not just lead to good democracy: it is democracy.

Women are real. Our reality covers the whole human megillah, from feeble to fierce, from bad to good, from endangered to dangerous. We don't just deserve power, we have it. And power in this and every other society is not just the capacity to benefit those around us.

Women are constantly being taught how to defend themselves against attack from men. I would like to shift the perception. I want to say that that responsibility should no longer rest on the shoulders of women alone.

Now that Arab women are pouring into the streets by the million, men discover with dismay that they, not women, were the captives of the harem dream.

Politics is there the way men and women are there, the way the Atlantic Ocean is there. Sometimes I've written about politics specifically, I mean about politics as it's understood on television and in newspapers.

Ageing is something that both men and women are utterly terrified about.