Quotes About Norms

It seems like cheating somehow, breaking some overarching Law of the Way Things Are Supposed to Be.

There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.

Tutti sono bisessuali, disse l'uomo dai capelli grigi. La società, il condizionamento precoce, la buona o la cattiva sorte - dipende da come ci è stato detto di considerarla - determinano il risultato. Nulla è 'giusto'. Solo la negazione dell'istinto è sbagliata.

Most young men, particularly attractive ones, have sexual relations with their own kind. I suppose this is news to those who believe in the two teams: straight, which is good and unalterable; queer, which is bad and unalterable unless it proves to be only a Preference, which must then, somehow, be reversed, if necessary by force.

The American passion for categorizing has now managed to create two non-existent categories—gay and straight.

No, Lin! This is India. Nobody can take his clothes off, not even to wash his bodies. This is India. Nobody is ever naked in India. And especially, nobody is naked without clothes.

I believe that anything can be for men or women. I mean, I've worn a lace dress before!

The U.N. is worse than disaster. The U.N. creates conflicts. Look at the disgraceful U.N. Human Rights Council: It transmits norms which are harmful, anti-liberty and anti-Semitic, among other things. The world would be better off in its absence.

I knew a ton of actors and was friends with them, but I never dated actresses. I tried to date 'normal' people because the Hollywood dating rule is 'one star per couple' because it's quite a challenge to match the egos of two actors.

I go feminine, I go masculine. I am both, actually. I think the male side is a bit stronger in me, and I have to tone it down sometimes. I'm not like a normal woman, that's for sure.

I use glamour as a tool, almost like armor to confidently take up space, to provoke questions and conversations about society and gender norms.

Russia, at the start of the 21st century, at least in its larger cities, very much resembled the United States of the early 1990s: being gay was no longer criminal or shameful, but it was still not a topic for polite conversation or public discussion.

What once were vices are manners now.

I began to wonder if anyone still believed Jesus meant thos things He said. I thought if we just stopped and asked 'what if He really meant it?' it could turn the world upside down. It is a shame christians have become so normal.

Do I want children because I want to be admired as the admirable sort of woman who has children? Because I want to be seen as a normal sort of woman, or because I want to be the best kind of woman, a woman with not only work, but the desire and ability to nurture, a body that can make babies, and someone who another person wants to make babies with? Do I want a child to show myself to be the (normal) sort of woman who wants and ultimately has a child?

There is no conceivable human action which custom has not at one time justified and at another condemned.

Time is a great legalizer even in the field of morals.

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.

Do these people not know that civilized living ought not to start before noon or end before four in the morning?

we have no template for what a powerful woman looks like, except that she looks rather like a man.

Unusually for the Trump era, the argument in the hearings was not about the facts—the facts were known and uncontested—but about the nature of political power in America. One side was arguing that political power was provisionally granted by voters and limited by law, rules, norms, expectations, policy legacy, and the system of checks and balances. The other side was arguing that power wants to be absolute and is limited only by what the president can get away with.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a snob. I don't have a problem with Applebee's per se. But I think we can all agree, as a civilized society, that lives shouldn't change there. Significant

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a snob. I don't have a problem with Applebee's per se. But I think we can all agree, as a civilized society, that lives shouldn't change there.

Ideological fixation is the result of the ever-present tensions and conflicts between our normative wishes and interpretation of reality.