Quotes About Norms

The whole people contracts the habits and tastes of the magistrate.

There are people in Europe who, confounding together the different characteristics of the sexes, would make of man and woman beings not only equal but alike. They would give to both the same functions, impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights; they would mix them in all things—their occupations, their pleasures, their business.

There have never been free societies without mores, and as I said in the first part of this work,*1 it is woman who makes mores.

I realized that this is what many people in our society seem to want most from children: not that they are caring or creative or curious, but simply that they are well behaved.

One of our most vital functions is an ability to listen to the true story of our own lives. Accordingly, the central issue in this book is the conflict between the things we feel—the things our bodies register—and the things we think we ought to feel so as to comply with moral norms and standards we have internalized at a very early age.

Odd choices were simply easier for men, most of whom would find women glad to marry them. Not so the other way around.

Men. What they do. It's so sick and stupid. You can't believe it.

Folks crying and fanning and trying to keep a stray eye on the children, but they don't stare at Sofia and her sisters. They act like this the way it always done. I love folks.

In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward a straiter resemblance to the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell. Aborigines

heterosexuality is considered an emotional dysfunction. Relatively easy to cure.

in the battle between anxiety and social custom, social custom almost always won.

Samtidigt kan liberaliseringen av uppfostran slå över i rädsla för att lära ut normer, regler och begrepp som rätt och fel. Detta kan också vara destruktivt, även för den mentala utvecklingen, då det inte finns något för barnen att upptäcka, ingen moral att utforska och förstå.

Eastern philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti,26 who explained: "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society.

It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society.

Jiddu Krishnamurti, 26 who explained: "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society.

Being a biological mother just isn't part of my experience this time around. However, I am a mother who continues to give birth to ideas and ways of experiencing life that challenge the norm.

We live not according to reason, but according to fashion.

I think life is easier if you're straight.

Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.

Club members refuse to abide by certain unwritten rules, and they make people aware of the existence of those rules by breaking them in public situations.

You mean that a Frenchman could share with a friend and yet not go to prison?' 'Share? Do you mean unite? If both are of age and avoid public indecency, certainly.' 'Will the law ever be that in England?' 'I doubt it. England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.

Can what they call civilization be right, if people mayn't die in the room where they were born?

We are conventional people, and conventions — if you will but see it — are majestic in their way, and will claim us in the end. We do not live for great passions or for great memories, or for anything great.

Why? Why were most big things unladylike?