Quotes About Norms

For to change the norms, the very foci of attention, of a cultural system is a difficult task - far more complex than that of changing an individual's attitudes and interests.

Society, in general, has taught for many generations that when you reach a certain age, you have to learn to stop playing.

We're all taught to blend in and behave.

I almost got kidnapped trying to find a taxi in the street. In Saudi Arabia, it's not normal for a woman to walk in the street alone, and I don't cover my face, so I am an open target.

All modern secularity requires is that our public norms and the arguments for them not presuppose common acceptance of Jewish or Christian revelation, even if these public norms are consistent with a particular community's revelation and the authoritative teachings it derives from that revelation.

If the world was truly a rational place, men would ride sidesaddle.

If the world were a logical place, men would ride side-saddle.

Progress does not come from following the norms, but instead by breaking them. What is normal remains the same and therefore we must depart from the past.

Once a month, some women act like men act all the time.

Once norms are broken without consequence, further breakage ensues.

As more windows shatter, other aspects of community life also start unraveling. The unspoken norm becomes: Do whatever you want here because everyone else is doing it.

On the traditional, heroic conception it is the normative statuses that matter, not the agent's attitudes. Parricide and incest ought not be. One should not act so as to incur the normative status of father killer and mother fucker.

Government doesn't "intrude" on the "free market." It creates the market. The rules are neither neutral nor universal, and they are not permanent. Different societies at different times have adopted different versions. The rules partly mirror a society's evolving norms and values but also reflect who in society has the most power to make or influence them.

Cultures have norms that reflect centuries of shared beliefs and ideals. Do not expect to scoff at such things with impunity. You will be punished somehow, even if just through isolation — a position of real powerlessness.

Conforming to social norms, you will listen more to others than to your own voice.

Most people go along with the crowd. They do things because everybody else does it.

Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not.

What helps define a particular culture? Values, beliefs, attributions, ideologies.

Robust support for marital norms serves children, spouses, and hence our whole economy, especially the poor. Family breakdown thrusts the state into roles for which it is ill-suited: parent and discipliner to the orphaned and neglected, and arbiter of disputes over custody and paternity.

But then July accepted it and never scolded back, so perhaps that was the way of the world: women scolded, and men kept quiet and stayed out of the way as much as possible.

will never be called upon to enact: the mainstream is

Science is morally neutral, but social science shows us that some moral codes are better than others.

We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.

The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness.