Our Society Quotes - Page 36

• Grief is not just a series of events, stages, or timelines. Our society places enormous pressure on us to get over loss, to get through grief. But how long do you grieve for a husband of fifty years, a teenager killed in a car accident, a four-year-old child: a year? Five years? Forever? The loss happens in time, in fact in a moment, but its aftermath lasts a lifetime.

  Copyright: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Family Limited Partnership.

  Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

  Husband, Children, Teenager

  81 Copy quote

• The American system demands success, and in order to succeed we must first believe that we can. Yet our society, with its intolerance of failure and poverty, traps millions of people in positions where any kind of success seems impossible to contemplate, and in which failure itself is a kind of passive rebellion against their own misery and the social system which created it in the first place. To succeed it is necessary to accept the world as it is and rise above it.

  Michael Korda

  Believe, Order, People

  "Success!". Book by Michael Korda, 1977.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mere unorthodoxy or dissent from the prevailing mores is not to be condemned. The absence of such voices would be a symptom of grave illness to our society.

  Earl Warren

  War, Voice, Justice

  Earl Warren (1959). “The Public Papers of Chief Justice Earl Warren”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The dynamics and structures found in those groups called families in our society may not be evident in those groups called families in other places and times.

  R. D. Laing

  Groups, May, Dynamics

  7 Copy quote

• In our society many of the old rituals have lost much of their power. New ones have not arisen.

  R. D. Laing

  Lost, Ritual

  21 Copy quote

• Our "society" is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units. Desperately insecure, fearing his woman will leave him if she's exposed to other men or to anything remotely resembling life, the male seeks to isolate her from other men and from what little civilization there is, so he moves her out to the suburbs, a collection of self-absorbed couples and their kids. Isolation, further, enables him to try to maintain his pretense of being an individual by being a "rugged individualist", a loner, equating non-co-operation and solitariness with individuality.

  Valerie Solanas

  Couple, Moving, Kids

  "SCUM Manifesto". P. 7, 1967.

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love can't flourish in a "society" based on money and meaningless work, but rather requires complete economic, as well as personal, freedom, leisure time and the opportunity to engage in intensely absorbing, emotionally satisfying activities which, when shared with those you respect, lead to deep friendship, but which our "society" provides practically no opportunity to engage in.

  Valerie Solanas

  Opportunity, Leisure, Economic

  Manifesto by Valerie Solanas, 1967.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sex is the refuge of the mindless. And the more mindless the woman, the more deeply embedded in the male "culture," in short, the nicer she is, the more sexual she is. The nicest women in our "society" are raving sex maniacs.

  Valerie Solanas

  Sex, Males, Culture

  Valerie Solanas (1971). “SCUM manifesto”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We have really lost in our society the sense of the sacredness of life.

  Basil Hume

  Society, Lost, Sacredness

  The Observer Review, 1995.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even a woman who has the soul of a pirate, at least pirate morals, even a woman who prefer loneliness to the bickerings and constraints of heterosexual marriage, even such a woman who is a freak in our society needs a home... The only characteristic freaks share is our knowledge that we don't fit in.

  Kathy Acker

  Home, Pirate, Soul

  "Don Quixote: A Novel". Book by Kathy Acker, 1986.

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• "Natural" is a very dangerous word to use about sexuality ... Our society's notions of normality are completely fake and meta-trendy, since they rely on the changing standards of superstition, religion, Christianity and gender bias to define themselves. Americans, in particular, exhibit very childish reactions to sexual practices that are new to them, much like little kids who are offered a vegetable they haven't seen before: "That's disgusting!" "But darling, you haven't even tried it!" "I don't care, I hate it, I hate it!

  Susie Bright

  Hate, Kids, Gender Bias

  "Nothing But the Girl" by Susie Bright, (Introduction), 1996.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic. Not only are there plenty of exceptionalists who take exception to the stereotyping of the mass culture but that very string of epithets comes from a series of books that have been recent best-sellers, symptoms of a popular, living tradition of dissent from things as they are.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Lonely, Book, Men

  "An Autobiographical Novel". Book by Kenneth Rexroth. Introduction, www.bopsecrets.org. 1991.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many people feel they are powerless to do anything effective with their lives. It takes courage to break out of the settled mold, but most find conformity more comfortable. This is why the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it's conformity.

  Rollo May

  Opposites, People, Mold

  "Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice". Book by Napoleon Hill, p. 104, 1991.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• The capabilities (intellectual and material) of contemporary society are immeasurably greater than ever before - which means that the scope of society's domination over the individual is immeasurably greater than ever before. Our society distinguishes itself by conquering the centrifugal social forces with Technology rather than Terror, on the dual basis of an overwhelming efficiency and an increasing standard of living.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Mean, Technology, Intellectual

  "One-Dimensional Man" by Herbert Marcuse, (p. 10), 1964.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I didn't know I was depressed until years later. Actually, I went to the Minirth-Meier Clinic for ADD. I got tested for ADD. So, that's nice. It's nice to know you got ADD. So, that puts you on medication. Did that for years. Then got tested for clinical depression. So, finally when they tell you this, you go, 'ahhh, this is great.' So, now this explains events in your life and how you handle them. But our society frowns on it and they don't want their heroes to have these issues, but unfortunately I do.

  Terry Bradshaw

  Nice, Hero, Years

  "Going Deep with Hall of Fame Quarterback Terry Bradshaw". Interview with Scott Ross, www.cbn.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Marx saw exploitation in terms of the rewards of human labor, but we can see it in terms of all the values of our society.

  Charles A. Reich

  Rewards, Saws, Term

  charles a. reich (1970). “the greening of america”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Being part of The L Word made me realize how much more television can be that what I had experienced in my lifetime in terms of being able to be of service to people. I had so many fans come up to me who were really deeply appreciative of the show and what it had meant for them and their own sense of identity and their own sense of inclusion in our society and in our culture.

  Jennifer Beals

  People, Identity, Culture

  "The Chicago Code: Interview With Jennifer Beals". Interview with Lynn DeVries, tvdramawatch.com. February 04, 2011.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• In Britain, journalists often view comparisons with our society going back two, three, or seven centuries as more relevant than comparisons going back two, three, or seven decades. Drunkenness centuries ago is more illuminating than comparative sobriety 30 years ago. The distant past, selectively mined for evidence that justifies our current conduct, becomes more important than living memory.

  Anthony Daniels

  Memories, Past, Views

  "Selective Memory". www.city-journal.org. July 6, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My work always presents problems in our society. Those problems may be anything from injustice to freedom, and everything related to humanity.

  Okky Madasari

  Humanity, May, Injustice

  4 Copy quote

• The concept of "mental health" in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.

  Theodore Kaczynski

  Stress, Doe, Needs

  The Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski (2005). “The Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society and Its Future”, p.52, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

  125 Copy quote

  Show source

• Political philosophy is realistically utopian when it extends what are ordinarily thought to be the limits of practicable political possibility and, in so doing, reconciles us to our political and social condition. Our hope for the future of our society rests on the belief that the social world allows a reasonably just Society of Peoples.

  John Rawls

  Philosophy, Political, Limits

  John Rawls (2001). “The Law of Peoples: With, The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”, p.11, Harvard University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The truth is every problem can't be solved by government. Many are caused by the moral breakdown in our society. And the answers to those challenges lie primarily in our families and our faiths, not our politicians.

  Marco Rubio

  Lying, Government, Challenges

  "Marco Rubio's reply speech to state of the union", www.theguardian.com. February 12, 2013.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• With us the disguise must be complete. The familiar identity of things has to be pulverized in order to destroy the finite associations with which our society increasingly enshrouds every aspect of our environment.

  Mark Rothko

  Order, Identity, Association

  Mark Rothko, Miguel López-Remiro (2006). “Writings on Art”, p.59, Yale University Press

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Above all, we should bear in mind that our liberty is not an end in itself; it is a means to win respect for human dignity for all classes of our society.

  Hyman Rickover

  Mean, Winning, Class

  "Thoughts on Man's Purpose in Life". Second Annual Morgenthau Memorial Lecture, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, 1982.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The complete emancipation of women from the ties which held them back in the past, during the ages of despotism and ignorance, is a basic aim of the Party and the Revolution. Women make up one half of society. Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated.

  Saddam Hussein

  Party, Ignorance, Past

  Saddam Hussein (2009). “Social and Foreign Affairs in Iraq (Routledge Revivals)”, p.14, Routledge

  178 Copy quote

  Show source