Quotes About Norms

Culture is not a biologically transmitted complex.

Irreverence is an essential part of our culture.

Folklore provides a socially sanctioned outlet for the discussion of the forbidden and taboo.

Remember, taboos are just a map of what a society feels it's acceptable to be neurotic about. Taboos aren't rational.

A woman going out with a younger man feels like the last taboo.

Isn't privacy about keeping taboos in their place?

We exist in this weirdly schizo culture, where sex is everywhere in the media, and yet, at the same time, you don't sit down and have a conversation about what you did in bed last night with your friends. Despite the ubiquity of sex, it's still a taboo when it comes to day-to-day conversation.

There are necessary taboos and essential decencies in every morally healthy society.

I think it's a little bit taboo to have a coming-of-age story where a girl explores her sexuality. That just doesn't happen a lot.

The more I question myself about why I think pop is taboo, the more I realize it's not.

I think we really feel like Crowdrise could be something that, 20 years from now, people take for granted because that's just how you do it, like if you're going to raise money for something, that's how you do it.

We are all murderers and prostitutes - no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be.

The day I stopped drinking milk' is a very sensitive story telling the tale of how we forget what is 'normal' for us falls under the category of 'expensive' or 'unaffordable' for middle or poor class.

What is it about our society where anyone who does not have Asperger's gets talked out of their heterodox ideas?

To conform to a sick society is to become sick.

Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with.

Before we can talk or walk, we are programmed to recognize norm violators - those whose antisocial behavior classifies them as "bad".

However, being moral can include not only acts of kindness but also deeds of conformity and violence.

Sometimes we've accepted rules and codes and limits without realizing it.

Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them.

Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them. From an anthropologist's view, 'justice' is a search for workable customs.

Customs, morals--is there a difference?

Being "up to something" was the unnamable and unforgiveable crime for which any American male could be indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced in one breath. He wondered how things had gotten rigged so that the male half of the race must always behave to suit feminine rules and feminine logic, like a snotty-nosed school boy in front of a stern teacher.

Any custom is man-made and is therefore a finite attempt to describe an infinity of relationships. It follows as the night from day that any custom necessarily has its exceptions.