Society Quotes
3,327 quotes
"Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine."
"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace."
"The unhappiest people in this world, are those who care the most about what other people think."
"Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue)."
"There are people who are generic. They make generic responses and they expect generic answers. They live inside a box and they think people who don't fit into their box are weird. But I'll tell you what, generic people are the weird people. They are like genetically-manipulated plants growing inside a laboratory, like indistinguishable faces, like droids. Like ignorance."
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions."(Essay to Leo Baeck, 1953)"
"Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public."
"My reality is it’s nighttime. The truth is I’m just blindfolded. How many people live like me, in self-deluded darkness?"
"I suppose it’s not a social norm, and not a manly thing to do — to feel, discuss feelings. So that’s what I’m giving the finger to. Social norms and stuff…what good are social norms, really? I think all they do is project a limited and harmful image of people. It thus impedes a broader social acceptance of what someone, or a group of people, might actually be like."
"My cat is ignorant of the law. But then so am I. That means I am not his master, because we are both slaves."
"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it."
"When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood."
"If money’s the god people worship, I’d rather go worship the devil instead."
"Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects."
"The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of the martyr."
"Nin knew how much humans loved money, riches, and material things—though he never really could understand why. The more technologically advanced the human species got, the more isolated they seemed to become, at the same time. It was alarming, how humans could spend entire lifetimes engaged in all kinds of activities, without getting any closer to knowing who they really were, inside."
"Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance."
"Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people."
"In my opinion, our health care system has failed when a doctor fails to treat an illness that is treatable."
"When I touched her body,I believed she was God.In the curves of her formI found the birth of Man,the creation of the world,and the origin of all life."
"A visitor is a friend, he brings news, good or bad, which is bread to the hungry minds in lonely places. A real friend who comes to the house is a heavenly messenger, who brings the panis angelorum."
"We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
"We are all connected. When one arm or foot is poisoned, the whole body becomes infected."
"I refuse to let the standards of evil people chip away at my capacity for integrity."
"Anya looked upon Nin admirably. Having him as a partner-in-crime—if only on this one occasion, which she hoped would only be the start of something more—was more revitalizing than the cheap thrills of a cookie-cutter shallow, superficial romance, where the top priority was how beautiful a person was on the outside."
"Songwriting and poetry are so commonly birthed from underdogs because one can make even the ugliest situations admirable, or more beautiful than the beautiful situations - they are the most graceful media in which the lines of society are distorted."
"Seemingly minor yet persistent things penetrate the mind over time making it difficult to ever realize the impact; hence, though quite unfortunate, the most dangerous forms of corruption are those that are subtle and below the radar."
"Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of the various societies' histories] towards success or failure: long-term planning and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives."
"There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it."
"Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade..."
"The danger today is in believing there are no sick people, there is only a sick society."
"Love as a concrete foundation for an authentically functional civilization requires the around-the-clock labors of forgiveness. Without it, Love fails, Friendship fails, Intelligence fails, Humanity: fails."
"How was she created? I'm not sure if you realize this, but it was in God's image. How can anybody dare to speak ill of something which bears such a noble imprint?"
"In essence I find that the foundation of modern conservatism is driven by a clinging to God in fear of the world, whereas the foundation of modern liberalism is a clinging to the world in fear of God; albeit, the true foundation should be one's clinging to God in fear of God."
"Don’t hide what you have just because people tell you it’s not normal. I have known normal people…and guess what? They are as boring as hell..."
"If you believed in Christianity or Islam it was called 'faith', but if you believed in astrology or friday the thirteenth it was Superstition!"
"What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline."
"To be agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you already know."
"We can’t continuously be a society of well-wishers. We must take action to bring those wishes to fruition."
"If you use a philosophy education well, you can get your foot in the door of any industry you please. Industries are like the blossoms on a tree while philosophy is the trunk - it holds the tree together, but it often goes unnoticed."
"The measure of a society is not only what it does but the quality of its aspirations."
"I have no desire for others to take it on themselves to analyze my thoughts. I am without thoughts. I have never, not even once, acted on the basis of any doctrine or philosophy.I am convinced that those people whom the world considers good and respects are all liars and fakes. I do not trust the world."
"If the Creator stood before a million men with the light of a million lamps, only a few would truly see him because truth is already alive in their hearts. Truth can only be seen by those with truth in them. He who does not have Truth in his heart, will always be blind to it."
"A leader should always be open to criticism, not silencing dissent. Any leader who does not tolerate criticism from the public is afraid of their dirty hands to be revealed under heavy light. And such a leader is dangerous, because they only feel secure in the darkness. Only a leader who is free from corruption welcomes scrutiny; for scrutiny allows a good leader to be an even greater leader."
"I'd rather strive for the kind of interview where instead of me asking to introduce myself to society, society asks me to introduce myself to society."
"Those who make conversations impossible, make escalation inevitable."
"I learned to write nice as hell. Birds an' stuff like that, too; not just word writin'. My ol' man'll be sore when he sees me whip out a bird in one stroke. Pa's gonna be mad when he sees me do that. He don't like no fancy stuff like that. He don't even like word writin'. Kinda scare 'im, I guess. Ever' time Pa seen writin', somebody took somepin away from 'im."
"Your comfort zone is a place where you keep yourself in a self-illusion and nothing can grow there but your potentiality can grow only when you can think and grow out of that zone."
"It wasn't science and technology that cause a slow progress, but collective knowledge of the society and market demands."
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