Our Society Quotes - Page 5

• A university is not a service station. Neither is it a political society, nor a meeting place for political societies. With all its limitations and failures, and they are invariably many, it is the best and most benign side of our society insofar as that society aims to cherish the human mind.

  Richard Hofstadter

  Failure, Men, Political

  14 Copy quote

• ... For all our alarm, it is clear that the religious right is responding to a real hunger in our society... a deep-seated yearning for stable values... When conservative Christian groups talk of failures in our educational system, the erosion of our moral standards, and the waste of young lives, they are addressing real and legitimate concerns... Among secularists, the aversion toward discussion of moral values, let alone religion, can reach absurd extremes.

  Norman Lear

  Christian, Religious, Real

  4 Copy quote

• It is important for people to recognize that those who are working for the dissolution of our society have a spiritual agenda. They are not merely attempting to dismantle the historic cultural values of this nation and move us toward a homogenized world. They also want to destroy Christianity and Bible-based religion. It is a clear part of their agenda and they have already moved a long way in that direction.

  Pat Robertson

  Christian, Spiritual, Religious

  4 Copy quote

• Ours is a post-Christian world in which Christianity, not only in the number of Christians but in cultural emphasis and cultural result, is no longer the consensus or ethos of our society.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Christian, Religious, Ethos

  7 Copy quote

• In the 20th century, evangelical Christians in America have naively accepted the role assigned to us by an anti-religious, anti-Christian consensus in our society. We have been relegated to a cultural backwater, where we are meant to paddle around content in the knowledge that we are merely allowed to exist.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Christian, Religious, America

  8 Copy quote

• Even though our society is increasingly pluralistic, we must ensure an equal playing field rather than a religiously cleansed arena where people of faith are no longer welcome.

  Jay Sekulow

  Christian, Religious, People

  7 Copy quote

• Consider children as a beat. Clearly not an institution of power, children don't vote and they don't pass taxes. They have no money, and they don't buy newspapers or watch the news on television. Consequently, children are one of the most neglected segments of society in the news, except as a subtopic of other power beats such as education, family, and crime. Children are in serious trouble in this society, which means the foundation of our society is in trouble, which means the future is in trouble, and that is news.

  Joan Konner

  Children, Mean, Foundation

  4 Copy quote

• We must work together to ensure the equitable distribution of wealth, opportunity and power in our society.

  Nelson Mandela

  Opportunity, Working Together, Distribution Of Wealth

  Nelson Mandela (2011). “Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations”, p.18, Pan Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• And here we are with our improved human world that we've spent a great deal of time and energy working on. We've improved the rivers and the lakes and the land and our society and our ways of living to the point where we now wonder if the human race will survive.

  Steve Hagen

  Lakes, Race, Land

  Steve Hagen (2011). “Buddhism Plain and Simple”, p.106, Tuttle Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our society is so much about fidelity being this thing that's sacred, and people are miserable. They're suicidal. It brings more depression than anything else on earth, probably. Sorry to say that, guys.

  Julie Delpy

  Sorry, Suicidal, People

  "The Before Midnight Team: Reunion of the Year 2013". Interview with Lauren Bans, www.gq.com. December 5, 2013.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our society is all about focusing on the externals, "These people like me, I'm successful because of these people, they view me as being good" and we need to take that vision and instead of expanding it outwards we need to look inside ourselves.

  Rainn Wilson

  Successful, Views, People

  Interview with David Hirschman, bigthink.com. November 11, 2010.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Before we snap to judge someone who's done a horrible crime, is it possible that all of us in the worst possible circumstances could be capable of something like that? So it's about not judging people before really considering what the circumstance was and that not all murderers are created equal. We have a tendency in our society to just say murder? Cut and dried. Go away forever. Or maybe you should have the electric chair yourself.

  Jack Black

  Cutting, Should Have, Judging People

  "Actor Jack Black". "The Tavis Smiley show" with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org. November 1, 2012.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most powerful force changing our society is the information revolution.

  Newt Gingrich

  Powerful, Information, Revolution

  4 Copy quote

• Consumption is a social relationship, the dominant relationship in our society-one that makes it harder and harder for people to hold together, to create community.

  Juliet B. Schor

  People, Community, Together

  8 Copy quote

• Everyone has a need for significance; and if we can't make that possible, or even probable, in our society, then it will be obtained in destructive ways.

  Rollo May

  Way, Needs, Significance

  Rollo May (1998). “Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence”, p.179, W. W. Norton & Company

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• On Immigration policy and reform [Republicans] are on the wrong side of the track. ... They would have you believe that if they get into office, they are going to make sure that they are going to get rid of everyone in our society who was not born in America.

  Maxine Waters

  Believe, America, Office

  53 Copy quote

• Discrimination and prejudice of any kind have no place in sports or in our society.

  Jerry Reinsdorf

  Sports, Prejudice, Discrimination

  8 Copy quote

• If Washington were President now, he would have to learn our ways or lose his next election. Only fools and theorists imagine that our society can be handled with gloves or long poles. One must make one's self a part of it. If virtue won't answer our purpose, we must use vice, or our opponents will put us out of office, and this was as true in Washington's day as it is now, and always will be.

  Henry Adams

  Self, Long, Office

  Henry Adams (2015). “Democracy”, p.82, Sheba Blake Publishing

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• We recognize the force of the argument that the effects of war under modern conditions may be felt in the economy for years and years, and that if the war power can be used in days of peace to treat all the wounds which war inflicts on our society, it may not only swallow up all other powers of Congress but largely obliterate the Ninth and the Tenth Amendments as well.

  William O. Douglas

  War, Power, Years

  4 Copy quote

• In view of the importance of philanthropy in our society, it is surprising that so little attention has been given to it by economic or social theorists. In economic theory, especially, the subject is almost completely ignored. This is not, I think, because economists regard mankind as basically selfish or even because economic man is supposed to act only in his self-interest; it is rather because economics has essentially grown up around the phenomenon of exchange and its theoretical structure rests heavily on this process.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Selfish, Men, Thinking

  "Notes on a Theory of Philanthropy". "Philanthropy and Public Policy", edited by Frank G. Dickinson, 1962.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we are at war with our parents, our family, our society, or our church, there is probably a war going on inside us also, so the most basic work for peace is to return to ourselves and create harmony among the elements within us - our feelings, our perceptions, and our mental states. That is why the practice of meditation, looking deeply, is so important.

  Nhat Hanh

  Family, Peace, War

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2007). “Living Buddha, Living Christ 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.10, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe that our society's "mistake-phobia" is crippling, a problem that begins in most elementary schools, where we learn to learn what we are taught rather than to form our own goals and to figure out how to achieve them. We are fed with facts and tested and those who make the fewest mistakes are considered to be the smart ones, so we learn that it is embarrassing to not know and to make mistakes. Our education system spends virtually no time on how to learn from mistakes, yet this is critical to real learning.

  Ray Dalio

  Life, Mistake, Smart

  25 Copy quote

• One of the greatest sources of problems in our society arises from people having loads of wrong theories in their heads - often theories that are critical of others - that they won't test by speaking to the relevant people about them. Instead, they talk behind people's backs, which leads to pervasive misinformation.

  Ray Dalio

  Life, People, Growth

  15 Copy quote

• Our society and our organizations have learned to value masculine, 'quick-fix' traits in leaders. In a primitive society, a rural society, or even the industrial society of the early 1990s, quick fixes worked out all right. But they are less likely to work in a complex society. We need to look at long-range outcomes now. Service and patience are what can keep things running effectively today and women can contribute a lot in both of these areas.

  Estelle Ramey

  Leadership, Running, Organization

  4 Copy quote

• There is a cannibalism that's loose in our society in which public figures such as the Clintons could try to come into this town and do something good for this country and then they get hammered away even though they're trying to do the right thing.

  David Gergen

  Country, Trying, Politics

  4 Copy quote