Best 3026 quotes in «society quotes» category

That old unionism was, however, very different from the kind we live with now. We do not live with an ideal, sometimes on the defensive, of union. We live with the overriding, overwhelming fact, a fact so technologically, economically, and politically validated that we usually forget to ask how fully this fact represents a true community, the spiritually significant communion which the old romantic unionism had envisaged.

That's parents. Fucking up their kids for generations.

That's the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores--when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our field of vision cautiously restricted to the road ahead, then the long journey into darkness is underway. Pale-skinned hillbillies and hard-faced yos, toothless white trash and gold-front gangsters--when we can glide on and feel only fear, we're well on the way. And if, after a time, we can glimpse the spectacle of the corner and manage nothing beyond loathing and contempt, then we've arrived at last at that naked place where a man finally sees the sense in stretching razor wire and building barracks and directing cattle cars into the compound. It's a reckoning of another kind, perhaps, and one that becomes a possibility only through the arrogance and certainty that so easily accompanies a well-planned and well-tended life. We know ourselves, we believe in ourselves; from what we value most, we grant ourselves the illusion that it's not chance in circumstance, that opportunity itself isn't the defining issue. We want the high ground; we want our own worth to be acknowledged. Morality, intelligence, values--we want those things measured and counted. We want it to be about Us. Yes, if we were down there, if we were the damned of the American cities, we would not fail. We would rise above the corner. And when we tell ourselves such things, we unthinkably assume that we would be consigned to places like Fayette Street fully equipped, with all the graces and disciplines, talents and training that we now posses. Our parents would still be our parents, our teachers still our teachers, our broker still our broker. Amid the stench of so much defeat and despair, we would kick fate in the teeth and claim our deserved victory. We would escape to live the life we were supposed to live, the life we are living now. We would be saved, and as it always is in matters of salvation, we know this as a matter of perfect, pristine faith. Why? The truth is plain: We were not born to be niggers.

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

That time is long gone. But aren't we still the same people?

That which is good for the society is not necessarily good for the individual. That which is good for the individual is good for the society.

That which we want less of in society should rarely be privatized and that which we want more of often should be.

That you are a born again Christian does not mean you will automatically succeed except you follow God's principles. Never forget faith without good work is dead.

The ability of a man to have mastery over his physical, emotional and mental state demonstrates the complexity and intricacy of humans

The adherent who believes in the hard working ethics of the black man experiences continuous success and development

The afflicted are basically the majority or only set of people who are insulted by injustice in society today.

The activities in a society is determined by its establishment

The African who was given something small will be much more grateful and happy than Europeans who was given something substantial

The air was icy, Mari came back in, grabbed a coat and went out again. Outside, far from the eyes of everyone, she lit a cigarette. She smoked slowly and guiltlessly, thinking about the young woman, the piano music she could hear and life outside the walls of Villete which was becoming unbearably difficult for everyone. In Mari's view this difficulty was due not to chaos or disorganization or anarchy but to an excess of order. Society had more and more rules and laws that contradicted the rules and new rules that contradicted the laws. People felt too frightened to take a step outside the invisible regulations that guided everyone's lives.

The air was icy, Mari came back in, grabbed a coat and went out again. Outside, far from the eyes of everyone, she lit a cigarrete. She smoked slowly and guiltlessly, thinking about the young woman, the piano music she could hear and life outside the walls of Villete which was becoming unbearably difficult for everyone. In Mari's view this difficulty was due not to chaos or disorganization or anarchy but to an excess of order. Society had more and more rules and laws that contradicted the rules and new rules that contradicted the laws. People felt too frightened to take a step outside the invisible regulations that guided everyone's lives.

The Agricultural Revolution was history's biggest fraud. Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo Sapiens, rather than vice versa.

The animals known as human beings live in humongous condominium blocks, just going about their daily lives. I've come to realize that it's just a modern jungle. And I'm the girl who's wandered into the forest.

The answer to violence is the improvement of childhood.

The answers to all questions of human society are in the lessons of human history, which are revealed in the Bible

The art of living. The only really Fine Art we have produced in modern times.

The attractiveness of power is something you should learn about before you get too much older, it's the thing that separates men from boys, tho not in the way most men think.

. . . the authors had developed indices that could be employed to measure the state of a civilization, to determine if society was healthy, in decline, or perhaps even dead. The indicators keyed in on everything from the accumulation of refuse to declines in everyday civility. They looked at how a society treated its most vulnerable citizens; examined a culture's architecture, gauging its scale in relation to humans and the surrounding natural world. One of the primary indicators, however, was a measure of the ability of a society's citizens to listen to each other and truly hear what was being said. It evaluated by gradations the ability of individuals to stand motionless for prolonged periods, receptive to their surroundings.

The bankers and financiers are badly overplaying their hands, again, and people are starting to catch on to the scam. Real wealth is tangible things produced with tangible effort. Loans made out of thin-air 'money' require no effort and are entirely ephemeral. But if those loans are used to acquire real ownership of real assets, then something has been exchanged for nothing and one party is getting screwed.

The battle over society—its direction, its temper, its organization, its character—is often played out on the square. But the battle rarely ends; it does not easily resolve [David Remnick, "Geopolitics: Strength in Numbers"].

The author relates the progress of inoculation against smallpox in America with the interaction between an African slave named Onisimus whose homeland knew how to treat the malady and and leading clergyman Cotton Mather who was curious and open-minded enough to listen to him.

The basic religious idea in all patriarchal religions is the negation of the sexual needs. Only in very primitive religions were religiosity and sexuality identical. When social organization passed from matriarchy to patriarchy and class society, the unity of religious and sexual cult underwent a split; the religious cult became the antithesis of the sexual. With that, the cult of sexuality went out of existence. It was replaced by the brothel, pornography and backstairs-sexuality. It goes without saying that when sexual experiences ceased to be one with the religious cults, when, instead, they became antithetical to them, religious excitation assumed a new function: that of being a substitute for the lost sexual pleasure, now no longer affirmed by society. Only this contradiction inherent in religious excitation makes the strength and the tenacity of the religions understandable: the contradiction of its being at one and the same time antisexual and a substitute for sexuality.

The beauty myth of the present is more insidious than any mystique of femininity yet: A century ago, Nora slammed the door of the doll's house; a generation ago, women turned their backs on the consumer heaven of the isolated multiapplianced home; but where women are trapped today, there is no door to slam. The contemporary ravages of the beauty backlash are destroying women physically and depleting us psychologically. If we are to free ourselves from the dead weight that has once again been made out of femaleness, it is not ballots or lobbyists or placards that women will need first; it is a new way to see.

The best society, in reality, is a society in which evils are limited by devices of Machiavellian construction (as opposed to devices of utopian or ideological construction). And in order to make such devices, you have to understand how things work. This is very different from how they “ought” to work.

The biggest form of witchcraft is denying someone information.

The biggest insult to any parent is a child that lives up to society standards and not his or her full potential.

The bond of love will unite the world.

The break of a family is the break of society.

The break of a family is the break of society. We must never break the bond of love and peace that unite us in sacred harmony.

the centre is missing, but we cannot stop searching for it or positing it. It is not that there is nothing there - it is that what is there is not capable of exercising responsibility

The challenge for people today--and it is not and easy one--is to maintain high personal standards even while feeling that one is living in a moral sewer.

The centrality of group effort to human life means that anything that changes the way groups function will have profound ramifications for everything from commerce and government to media and religion.

The churches should be responsible for the faulty value system we now see in our society.

The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch it and say: “You have to treat that. You have to get rid of that. Believe in Christ. Be converted.

The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.

The closer we try to get to God, the more we will hate to sin in our own lives, the more we are saddened by the thoughts that runs through our minds. I also think that the more we draw closer to God, the more God will honour us and will open doors for the right things to happen in our life.

The club is too loud to talk, so after a couple of drinks, everyone feels like the centre of attention but completely cut off from participating with anyone else. You're the corpse in an English murder mystery.

The cameras were electronic monsters, moving with them as they walked and staring with one big, perverted eye.

The child tends to be stripped of all social influences but those of the market place, all sense of place, function and class is weakened, the characteristics of region and clan, neighborhood or kindred are attenuated. The individual is denuded of everything but appetities, desires and tastes, wrenched from any context of human obligation or commitment. It is a process of mutilation; and once this has been achieved, we are offered the consolation of reconstituting the abbreviated humanity out of the things and the goods around us, and the fantasies and vapors which they emit. A culture becomes the main determinant upon morality, beliefs and purposes, usurping more and more territory that formerly belonged to parents, teachers, community, priests and politics alike.

The Chinese had a saying that had been in her mind for a while, troubling her: Society prepares the crime; the criminal only commits it.

The church preach so much about power in the kingdom of God but we don't talk about wisdom. Everybody goes for power forgeting that power without wisdom can be disastrous.

The clean, clear ending that society keeps looking for is impossible to find.

The clothes you wear speak not only to others, but also to yourself,affecting your energy level and your mood.

The collapse of the family and the local community and their replacement by the state and the market.

The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.

The correct action as we all know is to back off from EMF/RF exposures as a global society.