Quotes About Societies

In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.

A lack of moral clarity is why an Israeli journalist compared a kipa to a prison. It is why people in free societies cannot distinguish between religious fundamentalists in democratic states and religious terrorists in fundamentalist states. It is why people in free societies can come to see their fellow citizens as their enemies and foreign dictators as their friends.

He thanked me for our kindness, and I replied that we, as soldiers, had more in common with each other than we did with many people in our own societies.

W]e would do better to treat terrorists as common criminals, people who have broken the laws recognized by all civil societies. To treat them as soldiers is to increase their power, respectability, and commitment.

In our midst—in our very midst, Matron—are secret agents, secret societies, powers of evil known to the Yard but unsuspected by the general public. Mercifully so." He stopped short, folded his arms, and wondered how much of this the woman would swallow. Apparently the whole dose.

At the core of all societies, I will show, is the social suite: (1) The capacity to have and recognize individual identity (2) Love for partners and offspring (3) Friendship (4) Social networks (5) Cooperation (6) Preference for one's own group (that is, "in-group bias") (7) Mild hierarchy (that is, relative egalitarianism) (8) Social learning and teaching

Genes do amazing things inside our bodies, but even more amazing to me is what they do outside of them. Genes affect not only the structure and function of our bodies; not only the structure and function of our minds and, hence, our behaviors; but also the structure and function of our societies.

The paradox of honor killings is that societies with the most rigid moral codes end up sanctioning behavior that is supremely immoral: murder.

In general, the best clue to a nation's growth and development potential is the status and role of women. This is the greatest handicap of Muslim Middle Eastern societies today, the flaw that most bars them from modernity

Canadians and Europeans pay higher taxes and get universal health care, less poverty and homelessness, lower addiction rates and arguably more humane societies, and that's probably a worthwhile trade-off.

peaceful civil disobedience can work in oppressive societies that nevertheless allow protesters to protest.

Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.

Sensuality is a cultural legacy of the ancient world. Societies where the Greco-Roman legacy is being wiped out, or where it does not exist, only know sentimentalism and sexuality.

Egalitarian societies strangle the imagination without even satisfying envy.

Population growth disquiets the demographer only when he fears that it will impede economic progress or make it harder to feed the masses. But that man needs solitude, that human proliferation produces cruel societies, that distance is required between men so that the spirit might breathe, does not interest him. The quality of man does not matter to him.

However, the power difference between economic establishments and outsiders in societies where there is a fairly free market for supply and demand and even, in some areas, for professional appointments, is much less than that between absolute rulers or their councillors and their court musicians — even though artists who were famous and à la mode could take some liberties.

The availability of irrigation systems to water the land and produce grain and other food crops was the material foundation for these two great river-valley societies, Egypt and Iraq. They were hydraulic despotisms, in which a small ruling class, with the aid of soldiers and priests, commanded the material resources that gave sustenance to these civilizations and allowed them to build cities, palaces, and tombs.

The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones.

Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of 'wrong' ideas

Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of "wrong" ideas.

Today, the approach of the Fathers would be to invite well-fed societies to a collective ascesis that would make possible a better distribution of the world's resources, and prevent the gap between the rich and the poor of the planet from growing constantly wider.

Today's liberal democracy, with its culture of transgression, its drive to liberate anything and everything done by and between consenting adults, and its mania for management by metrics, appears bent on adding to history's examples of societies that failed to manage vice and the crooked timber of our humanity.

Liberty is a central concept in political philosophy and is often considered a fundamental value in democratic societies. However, the meaning of liberty and the extent to which it should be upheld has been a topic of debate throughout history.

One of the enduring problems with certain societies in the world - and this is certainly true of a lot of places in the Middle East - is that the capacity for self-governance and self-organizing just isn't there. It has to do with history.