Quotes About Societies

The habit of looking at the last ten thousand years as well as at the array of early societies as a mere prelude to the true history of our civilization which started approximately with the publication of the Wealth of Nations in 1776, is, to say the least, out of date.

jared_diamond_on_why_societies_collase

As we will explore, becoming agnostic in this way calls for transforming the financial, political and social structures that have made our economies and societies come to expect, demand and depend upon growth.

WEIRD societies: ones that are Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic.21

The Northern women who worked for abolition were generally not free of racial prejudice - many female abolition societies refused to allow black members.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Pates of Human Societies illustrates how farm-based societies that generated a surplus of food ultimately gave rise to professional specialization. "Twelve thousand years ago, everybody on earth was a hunter-gatherer; now almost all of us are farmers or else are fed by farmers." This

Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Pates of Human Societies illustrates how farm-based societies that generated a surplus of food ultimately gave rise to professional specialization.

Practicing kindness and selflessness, you naturally align your life with the Integral Way. Aligning your life with the Integral Way, you begin to eliminate the illusory boundaries between people and societies, between darkness and light, between life and death.

Feudal societies don't create great cinema we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans, the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don't fall into 'Everybody in their place and who's who ' and all that. But the theatre's full of that.

Without a revolution of the inner life, however slow, all our big designs are worthless. The work we have to do is with ourselves if we're ever going to be at peace with each other...the good that flows from it will shape our societies in an unprogrammed, unforeseen way, under the control of no single group of people or set of ideas.

Virtue is too passive, too narrow. Virtue can motivate individuals, but for groups, societies, a whole civilisation, it's a weak force. Nations are never virtuous, though they might sometimes think they are.

In the face of sluggish growth, aging societies, and increasing educational attainment of young women, the economic case for gender equality is clear.

What I argued in 'The Great Divide' is that societies can't function without trust, both politically and economically.

The truth is, we haven't really figured out yet how artists are going to thrive in modern mass societies. We're all experiments.

There is a paradox at the heart of our lives. Most people want more income and strive for it. Yet as Western societies have got richer, their people have become no happier.

Without knowing the full extent of the past, we have no idea whether the events we can see are typical of larger patterns or simply contingent products of particular eras, societies, or conjunctures. A statistician might say that the sample from which historians generalize is seriously skewed for the simple reason that we have no idea how or by how much it is skewed! If that is true, it makes all the larger generalizations of historians suspect.

Inequality causes problems by creating fissures in societies, leaving those at the bottom feeling marginalized or disenfranchised.

It's the relationship I have with the world: always trying to escape from reality. I'm a daydreamer; I don't feel in harmony with my epoch or the societies I live in.

Inclusive, good-quality education is a foundation for dynamic and equitable societies.

We have a list of human rights - right to food, right to shelter, right to health, right to education, many such items which are considered and accepted as bill of rights. These are to be insured to people. So all nations, all societies try to do that.

We are dealing with the greater challenges of globalisation. It is generating, in many cases, an increase in the levels of inequality in societies... that is undesirable.

Duplicity in matters of religion is not confined to Pakistan, but it hurts the most in societies where debate on religion is asphyxiated and preachers of hate have become keepers of faith.

There's no doubt that inequality destabilizes societies. I think the social science evidence on that front is crystal clear.

Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum.