c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Rebellion is when you look society in the face and say I understand who you want me to be, but I’m going to show you who I actually am.
— Anthony Anaxagorou
You may plainly perceive the traitor through his mask; he is well known every-where in his true colors; his rolling eyes and his honeyed tones impose only on those who do not know him. People are aware that this low-bred fellow, who deserves to be pilloried, has, by the dirtiest jobs, made his way in the world; and that the splendid position he has acquired makes merit repine and virtue blush. Yet whatever dishonourable epithets may be launched against him everywhere, nobody defends his wretched honour. Call him a rogue, an infamous wretch, a confounded scoundrel if you like, all the world will say “yea, ” and no one contradicts you. But for all that, his bowing and scraping are welcome everywhere; he is received, smiled upon, and wriggles himself into all kinds of society; and, if any appointment is to be secured by intriguing, he will carry the day over a man of the greatest worth. Zounds! these are mortal stabs to me, to see vice parleyed with; and sometimes times I feel suddenly inclined to fly into a wilderness far from the approach of men.
— Molière, The Misanthrope
If perchance a friend should betray you; if he forms a subtle plot to get hold of what is yours; if people should try to spread evil reports about you, would you tamely submit to all this without flying into a rage?
— Molière, The Misanthrope
The only unique contribution you can offer the world is to be who you actually are and no one else.
— Ashly Lorenzana
Both the mentally healthy and the neurotic are driven by the need to find an answer [to the problem of human existence], the only difference being that one answer corresponds more to the total needs of man, and hence is more conducive to the unfolding of his powers and to his happiness than the other. All cultures provide for a patterned system in which certain solutions are predominant, hence certain strivings and satisfactions.... The deviate from the cultural pattern is just as much in search of an answer as his more well-adjusted brother. His answer may be better or worse than the one given by his culture - it is always another answer to the same fundamental question raised by human existence. In this sense all cultures are religious and every neurosis is a private form of religion, provided we mean by religion an attempt to answer the problem of human existence.
— Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
People above the line of bare subsistence in this age, and in all earlier ages, do not use the surplus which society has given them primarily for useful purposes. They do not seek to expand their lives, to live more wisely, intelligently, understandingly, but to impress other people with the fact that they have a surplus.
— Stuart Chase
I long for the day when people embrace our common humanity and respect diversity.
— Liza M. Wiemer
If you can change the way people think, she said.The way they see themselves.The way they see the world.If you do that, you can change the way people live their lives.And that's the only lasting thing you can create.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Treatment for dependency at substance abuse treatment centers must change if alcoholism and addiction are to be overcome in our society.
— Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
All social interactions require some loss of freedom.
— Erol Ozan
Society has a herd psychology, so until we have more good shepherds we are lost.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
When she realizes that Nigel is having an affair, her first sentiment is satisfaction that she figured it out. Her second is that, despite all the palaver about betrayal, it doesn't feel so terrible.This is pleasing--it demonstrates a certain sophistication. She wonders if his fling might even serve her. In principle, she could leave him without compunction now, though she doesn't wish to. It also frees her from guilt about any infidelities she might wish to engage in. All in all, his affair might prove useful.
— Tom Rachman, The Imperfectionists
One measure of a civilization, in fact, is the percentage of misfits in its society.
— Kōbō Abe, Secret Rendezvous
A society coming apart at top and bottom, or passing over into another form, contains just as many possibilities for revelation as a society running along smoothly in its own rut. The individual is thrust out of the sheltered nest that society has provided. He can no longer hide his nakedness by the old disguises. he learns how much of what he has taken for granted was by its own nature neither eternal nor necessary but thoroughly temporal and contingent. He learns that the solitude of the self is an irreducible dimension of human life no matter how completely that self had seemed to be contained in its social milieu. In the end, he sees each man as solitary and unsheltered before his own death. Admittedly, these are painful truths, but the most basic things are always learned with pain, since our inertia and complacent love of comfort prevent us from learning them until they are forced upon us. It appears that man is willing to learn about himself only after some disaster; after war, economic crisis, and political upheaval have taught him how flimsy is that human world in which he thought himself so securely grounded. What he learns has always been there, lying concealed beneath the surface of even the best-functioning societies; it is no less true for having come out of a period of chaos and disaster. But so long as man does not have to face up to such a truth, he will not do so.
— William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy
Global libertarianism would be a borderless world society.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
It is the task of the "science of man" to arrive eventually at a correct description of what deserves to be called human nature. What has often been called "human nature" is but one of its many manifestations - and often a pathological one - and the function of such mistaken definition usually has been to defend a particular type of society as being the necessary one.
— Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
The most important thing that is happening in the world right now is the emerging of the new man.Since the monkeys, man has remained the same, but a great revolution is on it's way. When monkeys became man, it created the mind. With the new man, a great revolution will bring the soul in. Man will not just be a mind, a psychological being, he will be a spiritual being.This new consciousness, this new being, is the most important thing, which is happening in the world today. But the old man will be against the emerging of the new man, the old man will be against this new consciousness.The new man is a matter of life and death, it is a question of the survival of the whole earth. It is matter of survival of consciousness, of survival of life itself.The old man has become utterly destructive. The old man is preparing for a global suicide right now. Rather than allowing the new man, the old man would rather destroy the whole earth, destroying life itself.The old destructive man is preparing right now for a third world war. The global economical and political elite and the war industrial complex in the U.S, which runs the foreign policy of the U.S, is right now promoting for a third world war.The U.S. has over thrown the democratically elected government in Ukraine in an secret operation by the CIA, the world's largest terrorist organization, and replaced it with a fascistic regime, a marionette for the U.S.The war industrial complex is now desperately trying to promote the third war by demonizing, lying and blaming Russia. We see the same aggression and lies from the U.S. that we have seen before against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Venezuela and Iran.President Eisenhower warned against the war industrial complex, which he considered the largest threat to democracy. President John F. Kennedy also warned against a "secret conspiracy" against democracy. The war industrial complex consists of the international banks, oil companies, war industry, democratically elected politicians, conservative think tanks, international mainstream media and global companies, who make profits from human suffering and wars.The European governments and the mainstream media also cooperate with the war industrial complex to bring the world into disaster.But this time it will not work as the time for wars is over, and peace loving people and people who represent the new man are working against this kind of aggression.
— Swami Dhyan Giten
But a society in which pluralism is not undergirded by some shared values and held together by some measure of mutual trust simply cannot survive. Pluralism that reflects no commitments whatever to the common good is pluralism gone berserk... ..Leaders unwilling to seek mutually workable arrangements within systems to their own are not surviving the long-term interest of their constituents
— John W. Gardner, On Leadership
God made man, but man made the society we live in.
— Janice Cantore, Visible Threat
In order to appreciate and respect diversity we must first recognize and embrace our humanity.
— Liza Wiemer
As young adults, we were wearing the shoes of the new future. Our generation would soon be the ones to determine the political climate of our country, the constitution of a family, and the morality of man. What an awesome burden we carried.
— Lynda I Fisher
A society with values, is a rich society.
— Kristian Goldmund Aumann
A society that has destroyed freedom and beauty must itself be destroyed.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Jenna, standing in the doorway with her mouth and hand full of shelled pistachios, says, '"Real' is a dirty word in this place'.
— Lauren DeStefano, Wither
Intentions are the only thing they care about. They try to make you think they care about what you do, but they don't. They don't want you to act a certain way, they want you to think a certain way. So you're easy to understand. So you wont pose a threat to them.
— Veronica Roth, Four: A Divergent Story Collection
Nature can be cruel. Predators are everywhere. Those who don't need to be protected from outside forces often need to be protected from themselves. In society, women are referred to as "the fairer sex". But in the wild, the female species can be far more ferocious than their male counterparts. Defending the nest is both our oldest and strongest instinct. And sometimes, it can also be the most gratifying.
— Emily Thorne
Absolution is the washing away of sin. The promise of rebirth. And the chance to escape the transgressions of those who came before us. The best among us will learn from the mistakes of the past, while the rest seem doomed to repeat them. And then there are those who operate on the fringes of society, unburdened by the confines of morality and conscience. A ruthless breed of monsters whose deadliest weapon is their ability to hide in plain sight. If the people I've come to bring justice to cannot be bound by the quest for absolution, then neither will I.
— Emily Thorne
People rarely ventured outside the realm of their own hurts. They believed their own suffering was obvious to all, but might as well have been wearing blinders for all that they noticed anyone else's.
— Nenia Campbell, Touched with Sight
Here, by the grace of God and an inside straight, we have a personality untouched by the psychotic taboos of our tribe - and you want to turn him into a carbon copy of every fourth-rate conformist in this frightened land! Why don't you go whole hog? Get him a brief case and make him carry it wherever he goes - make him feel shame if he doesn't have it.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
The easiest thing for a person is to accept everything as it is and adjust with everyone in the surroundings by sacrificing or compromising originality, but it's also the worst thing if he proclaims that he has changed himself.
— Testy McTesterson
...most systems end up by making imagined humility into a form of vanity, so they end up with vanity just the same.
— Idries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way
Society has parted man from man, neglectful of the universal heart.
— William Wordsworth
An island, on the other hand, is small. There are fewer species, and the competition for survival has never reached anything like the pitch that it does on the mainland. Species are only as tough as they need to be, life is much quieter and more settled [..] So you can imagine what happens when a mainland species gets introduced to an island. It would be like introducing Al Capone, Genghis Khan and Rupert Murdoch into the Isle of Wight - the locals wouldn't stand a chance.
— Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See
There was and still is a tremendous fear that poor and working-class Americans might one day come to understand where their political interests reside. Personally, I think the elites worry too much about that. We dumb working folk were clubbed into submission long ago, and now require only proper medication for our high levels of cholesterol, enough alcohol to keep the sludge moving through our arteries, and a 24/7 mind-numbing spectacle of titties, tabloid TV, and terrorist dramas. Throw in a couple of new flavours of XXL edible thongs, and you've got a nation of drowsing hippos who will never notice that our country has been looted, or even that we have become homeless ourselves.
— Joe Bageant, Rainbow Pie
We have won the time lottery of the last 4 billion years.
— Stefan Molyneux
There, in the unconscious, we sleep upon the psyche's oceanic floor, together like some vast bed of kelp, each wavering strand an individual American, swaying in the currents of national suggestion. In the form of a giant Portuguese man-of-war, our government hovers, rippling above us, showering freshly produced national memory spores on the fertile bed of our forgetfulness. Schools of undulating corporate jellyfish pass over, sowing the brands of products and services ... followed by the octopi called media and marketing, issuing milky clouds of sperm to fertilise the seeds with the animating plasma of The Great Dream.
— Joe Bageant, Rainbow Pie
If there is any societyamong robbers and murderers, they must at least. . . .abstainfrom robbing and murdering one another. So beneficenceis less essential than justice is to the existence of society; alack of beneficence will make a society uncomfortable, butthe prevalence of injustice will utterly destroy it.
— Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
You are a stupid fucking woman, Emily Colt. Just like all your kind. I know you hate Americans, but—I never said I hated Americans, Sergei spat. I said your kind. Women. It doesn’t matter to me what country you’re from. You women are fucking stupid, and I’m tired of saving you. All of you.
— Allie Burke, Paper Souls
But work used to be the lot of every man, and now it is rapidly becoming an aristocratic privilege. Men nowadays are more often paid not to work.
— Colleen McCullough, A Creed for the Third Millennium
Was it permitted to believe that there was nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was a separate creature. Some were white hogs, some were black; some were brown, some were spotted; some were old, some young; some were long and lean, some were monstrous. And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self- confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it— it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life. And now was one to believe that there was nowhere a god of hogs, to whom this hog personality was precious, to whom these hog squeals and agonies had a meaning? Who would take this hog into his arms and comfort him, reward him for his work well done, and show him the meaning of his sacrifice?
— Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
I wouldn't live in a colony like that, myself, for a thousand dollars an hour. I wouldn't want it next door. I'm not too happy it's within ten miles. Why? Because their soft-headedness irritates me. Because their beautiful thinking ignores both history and human nature. Because they'd spoil my thing with their thing. Because I don't think any of them is wise enough to play God and create a human society. Look. I like privacy, I don't like crowds, I don't like noise, I don't like anarchy, I don't even like discussion all that much. I prefer study, which is very different from meditation-not better, different. I don't like children who are part of the wild life. So are polecats and rats and other sorts of hostile and untrained vermin. I want to make a distinction between civilization and the wild life. I want a society that will protect the wild life without confusing itself with it.
— Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
When the experts’ scientific knowledge is legitimated in terms of being rational, logical, efficient, educated, progressive, modern, and enlightened, what analogies can other segments of society . . . utilize to challenge them?
— Martin Guevara Urbina
What reader or dreamer doesn’t imagine the romantic life of a writer, who lingers between the desk and the fridge in the morning and in the evening attends cocktail parties thrown by nouveaux riches and the society ladies who hardly ever have the time to read?
— Rawi Hage, Carnival
Our democratic societies rest on a meritocratic worldview, or at any rate a meritocratic hope, by which I mean a belief in a society in which inequality is based more on merit and effort than on kinship and rents. This belief and this hope play a very crucial role in modern society, for a simple reason: in a democracy, the professed equality of rights of all citizens contrasts sharply with the very real inequality of living conditions, and in order to overcome this contradiction it is vital to make sure that social inequalities derive from rational and universal principles rather than arbitrary contingencies. Inequalities must therefore be just and useful to all, at least in the realm of discourse and as far as possible in reality as well.
— Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century
When all you have to face life situations with the attitude forced on to you by society traditions, you will then regret not being the mad you used to be but will never be again.
— Sameh Elsayed
Getting fired, despite sometimes coming as a surprise and leaving you scrambling to recover, is often a godsend. Most people aren’t lucky enough to get fired and die a slow spiritual death over 30-40 years of tolerating the mediocre.
— Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek
I think it's neat you do what you want. Not enough chicks do that, if you ask me--just tell society and their expectations to go fuck themselves. If more women did that, we'd be better off.
— Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Swimming against the current is not idiotic if the waters are racing toward a waterfall.
— Nicolás Gómez Dávila, Escolios a un texto implicito: Seleccion
Speak only that which will bring you honor.
— Guru Nanak, Sri Guru Granth Sahib
The fact is, rape is utterly commonplace in all our cultures. It is part of the fabric of everyday life, yet we all act as if it’s something shocking and extraordinary whenever it hits the headlines. We remain silent, and so we condone it…Until rape, and the structures – sexism, inequality, tradition – that make it possible, are part of our dinner-table conversation with the next generation, it will continue. Is it polite and comfortable to talk about it? No. Must we anyway? Yes.”‘To protect our children, we must talk to them about rape
— Desmond Tutu
When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns it's back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe.
— Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Harmonies
Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions, and buy records by the billions. 'We the people'--affect the making and quality of most of our culture, but not our art.
— Banksy
Sometimes animals are more human than men and men more animals than animals
— Válgame, Zori 1ª Parte
A leader is not just a person who gives orders. He is also the one who symbolises the society he leads. If the leader is corrupt, then the society must be corrupt too.
— Amish Tripathi
Societies only have waste products while acquiring fresh raw material remains a cheaper option than recycling.
— Peter F. Hamilton, The Naked God
Sometimes animals are more human than people and other times people are more animal than animals
— Válgame, Zori 2ª Parte
Protesters are still on the fringes like satellites, revolving around the system. But prophets and poets lead us into a new world, beyond simply yelling at the old one.
— Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
A system of justice does not need to pursue retribution. If the purpose of drug sentencing is to prevent harm, all we need to do is decide what to do with people who pose a genuine risk to society or cause tangible harm. There are perfectly rational ways of doing this; in fact, most societies already pursue such policies with respect to alcohol: we leave people free to drink and get inebriated, but set limits on where and when. In general, we prosecute drunk drivers, not inebriated pedestrians.In this sense, the justice system is in many respects a battleground between moral ideas and evidence concerning how to most effectively promote both individual and societal interests, liberty, health, happiness and wellbeing. Severely compromising this system, insofar as it serves to further these ideals, is our vacillation or obsession with moral responsibility, which is, in the broadest sense, an attempt to isolate the subjective element of human choice, an exercise that all too readily deteriorates into blaming and scapegoating without providing effective solutions to the actual problem. The problem with the question of moral responsibility is that it is inherently subjective and involves conjecture about an individuals’ state of mind, awareness and ability to act that can rarely if ever be proved. Thus it involves precisely the same type of conjecture that characterizes superstitious notions of possession and the influence of the devil and provides no effective means of managing conduct: the individual convicted for an offence or crime considered morally wrong is convicted based on a series of hypotheses and probabilities and not necessarily because he or she is actually morally wrong. The fairness and effectiveness of a system of justice based on such hypotheses is highly questionable particularly as a basis for preventing or reducing drug use related harm. For example, with respect to drugs, the system quite obviously fails as a deterrent and the system is not organised to ‘reform’ the offender much less to ensure that he or she has ‘learned a lesson’; moreover, the offender does not get an opportunity to make amends or even have a conversation with the alleged victim. In the case of retributive justice, the justice system is effectively mopping up after the fact. In other words, as far as deterrence is concerned, the entire exercise of justice becomes an exercise based on faith, rather than one based on evidence.
— Daniel Waterman, Entheogens, Society and Law: The Politics of Consciousness, Autonomy and Responsibility
Society in its wisdom has found ways of constructing refuges of all kinds, for since it has been disposed to make the love-life a pastime, it has also felt obliged to trivialize it, to make it cheap, risk-free and secure, as public pleasures usually are.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Sometimes animals are more human than men and other times men are more animals than animals
— Válgame, Zori 2ª Parte
A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it.
— Lewis H. Lapham
A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, but in his book or his picture the real man delivers himself defenceless. No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind. No one can produce the most casual work without disclosing the innermost secrets of his soul.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
Even the loneliest and most solitary in the universe... the very cold space dust... will eventually come together to form a star.
— G.C. Huxley, Adaptation
The only justification for looking down on anyone, is that you're going to stop and pick them up.
— Quincy Jones
I suppose the artists invented the firm breasts they put on women, and that in reality all women had flabby ones.
— Jean Cocteau, The White Paper
break the system use your imagination
— - Lars
An honorable man has a heart for the poor and vulnerable in our society.
— Kristian Goldmund Aumann
The poor serve the elite, and they have too much fear to stop. So the poor get poorer, and the elite stay safe and powerful.
— Chelsie Shock, Rogue
The cameras were electronic monsters, moving with them as they walked and staring with one big, perverted eye.
— Chelsie Shock, Rogue
I’m fifteen and I feel like girl my age are under a lot of pressure that boys are not under. I know I am smart, I know I am kind and funny, and I know that everyone around me keeps telling me that I can be whatever I want to be. I know all this but I just don’t feel that way. I always feel like if I don’t look a certain way, if boys don’t think I’m ‘sexy’ or ‘hot’ then I’ve failed and it doesn’t even matter if I am a doctor or writer, I’ll still feel like nothing. I hate that I feel like that because it makes me seem shallow, but I know all of my friends feel like that, and even my little sister. I feel like successful women are only considered a success if they are successful AND hot, and I worry constantly that I won’t be. What if my boobs don’t grow, what if I don’t have the perfect body, what if my hips don’t widen and give me a little waist, if none of that happens I feel like what’s the point of doing anything because I’ll just be the ‘fat ugly girl’ regardless of whether I do become a doctor or not.I wish people would think about what pressure they are putting on everyone, not just teenage girls, but even older people – I watch my mum tear herself apart every day because her boobs are sagging and her skin is wrinkling, she feels like she is ugly even though she is amazing, but then I feel like I can’t judge because I do the same to myself. I wish the people who had real power and control the images and messages we get fed all day actually thought about what they did for once.I know the girls on page 3 are probably starving themselves. I know the girls in adverts are airbrushed. I know beauty is on the inside. But I still feel like I’m not good enough.
— Laura Bates, Everyday Sexism
Everything that rises will fall. Empires, societies, governments. None of them lasts forever. Why? Because even though they are the products of change, they become resistant to change. The longer a society survives, the more it clings to its power, and the more it resists progress. The more it resists progress- resists change- the more its ciizens demand it. In response, the society tighten its grip, desperate to maintain control. It's afraid of losing its hold.
— Victoria Schwab, The Unbound
However, Gregor had become much calmer. All right, people did not understand his words any more, although they seemed clear enough to him, clearer than previously, perhaps because had gotten used to them
— Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Society is what decides who's sane and who isn't, so you got to measure up.
— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Language is a social art.
— Willard Van Orman Quine, Word and Object
The ways by which you may get your money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earn money 'merely' is to be truly idle or worse. If the labourer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for.. You must get your living by loving.
— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
And somewhereout there,in the river ofaddicts, alcoholics,wife beaters,doormats,overeducated legalized thieves,fascist police,and bitter rivalries—someone told meit’s a good city,and I don’t knowwhat’s more frightening
— Phil Volatile, White Wedding Lies, and Discontent: An American Love Story
Our beliefs affect our behavior towards others. And that makes ourbeliefs, not just a personal question, but an ethical one.
— Greta Christina
Man is a vile creature!
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Our society needs to restablish a culture of swag.
— Batuhan Ibal
That which we want less of in society should rarely be privatized and that which we want more of often should be.
— William MacGregor Robson
Guilt, did I say? In what consists ours, unless in the opinion of an ill-judging world?
— Matthew      Lewis, The Monk
May be the power lies in the hands of the one who holds the gun... so he just presses the trigger whenever the slightest streak of anger passes his mind... and after a few haunting days he roams freely in the country without fear .. and what about the one who faces the wrath and bears the bullets? He leaves a movement behind... but haven't such movements always been ephemeral? Is death the price you need to pay to open the eyes of those who care but just for a couple of days?
— Sanhita Baruah
The unity of Nigeria will only come if we overcome and overgrow tribe, materialism and selfish human nature.
— Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
Change in ourselves equals change in our society.
— Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
See, you have the choice we didn’t. You wanna think about it though, you do, before you decide to throw your lot in with us. Cause it’s not just about living in society’s stitches, you know, the bits in between, the squats and secret places. It’s about being Fixed.
— Hal Duncan, Scruffians! Stories of Better Sodomites
Everyone in this world is nuts, the difference is some of them just really good at disguising it.
— Rea Lidde, Haven
Women’s status in society has become the standard by which humanity’s progress toward civility and peace can be measured.”-Architects of Peace: Visions of Hope in Words and Images
— Mahnaz Afkhami
We hope that general readers with an interest in Japan will find in these accounts of fieldwork a wide spectrum of illustrations of the grassroots realities of everyday life in contemporary Japanese communities, companies, institutions, and social movements.
— Theodore C. Bestor, Doing Fieldwork in Japan
Death makes life precious. Without it nothing would mean anything. Imagine a society without death
— Jarred Cole
Although once when we were talking after class, Herr Silverman told me that when someone rises up and holds himself to a higher standard, even when doing so benefits others, average people resent it, mostly because they’re not strong enough to do the same.
— Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock
And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that’s the chief thing, and that’s everything; nothing else is wanted — you will find out at once how to arrange it all.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
History will judge societies and governments — and their institutions — not by how big they are or how well they serve the rich and the powerful, but by how effectively they respond to the needs of the poor and the helpless.
— César Chávez
Light a candle for the sinners set the world on fire
— Marilyn Manson
The institutions, conventions, customs and laws that make up the complex structure of a society are the work of a hundred centuries and a billion minds; and one mind must not expect to comprehend them in one lifetime, much less in twenty years.
— Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage
I was never afraid of the dark and I spent my youth walking through empty playgrounds at midnight, worried mothers telling girls to be careful and ”the world is an ugly place and not everyone wants you well”. But I was not afraid and I wished for adrenaline to make my veins pulsate in that way that puts them more on the outside of my skin than inside.After the first night with you I never walked alone at night again because suddenly I had something to lose. Something to save.
— Charlotte Eriksson
I cannot, however, but think that the world would be better and brighter if our teachers would dwell on the Duty of Happiness as well as the Happiness of Duty; for we ought to be as cheerful as we can, if only because to be happy ourselves is a most effectual contribution to the happiness of others.
— John Lubbock, The Pleasures of Life
We live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
The public thinks big, sensible, measured thoughts while people run around doing silly things
— Terry Pratchett, The Truth
Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed.
— Idries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way
All but universally, human architecture values front elevations over back entrances, public spaces over private. Danny Jessup says that this aspect of architecture is also a reflection of human nature, that most people care more about their appearance than they do about their souls.
— Dean Koontz, Forever Odd
Life in society requires consensus as an indispensable condition. But consensus, to be productive, requires that each individual contribute independently out of of his experience and insight.
— Solomon E. Asch
Blessed are the peacemakers? Billed are the warmongers, and then you shall have peace.
— Stefan Molyneux
What we are now witnessing in the 21st century is the fracture or complete breakdown of families, societies, and governments as a result of centuries of dehumanization that have taken a toll. More natural disasters (tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, etc.) merely uncover the reality of the national disasters we have created by granting sanctuary to dehumanization via the law.
— Liza Lugo, How Do Hurricane Katrina's Winds Blow? Racism in 21st-Century New Orleans
Modern man has a need for simplification that tends to find its expression one way or another. And this artificial monotony which he takes pains to create, this monotony which is slowly taking over the world, this monotony is the sign of our greatness. It bears the mark of a certain will-power, the will to utility; it is the expression of utility, a law that governs all our modern activity: the Law of Utility.
— Blaise Cendrars, Moravagine
In civilized societies, if you are offended by a cartoon, you do not burn flags, take up guns and raid buildings, chant death to your opponents, or threaten suicide bombings. You write a letter to the editor.
— Michelle Malkin
We used to talk and smile seven days ago when I was wearing a suit. Now I'm dressed in a beard and smell of dog shit I don’t even get eye contact. I ask her how her week is going, and she looks to her friend behind the counter as if to say: I think this creep is hitting on me. Shall we call the police?
— Craig  Stone, The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
A healthy society begins with healthy individuals.
— Sabina Nore
Life is too short to waste being a productive member of society.
— Sol Luckman, Beginner's Luke
Your neighbors are not all sheep. Your political opponents are not all evil or fools. Try talking to those you despise. They are your fellow citizens. And together, we are not lesser than any "greatest generation.".
— David Brin
What do woman say to little boys? " Stop fighting. Stop being so rough. Stop rough housing." They're boys you know, that's kinda what they're sapossed to do. So, men are sapossed to overcome all these biological drives and I'm just really interested in helping women overcome theirs caus' I think the spotlight of " Outgrow your bestial nature." has been pointed just a little bit too long at men and I think it's time to swivel that motherfucker around and point it at woman and say stop making yourself look like fucking sex clowns to milk money out of men's dicks. Stop lying about who you are and what you're about. Stop being flirty, manipulative, and trying to be sexy. Just stop doing it. It's time for women to outgrow biology just as men have been instructed to for about the last 20,000 years to outgrow their biology. "Stop slamming doors. Stop yelling. Stop climbing trees. Stop being rude. Stop farting. Stop enjoying fart jokes. Just stop being men." Ok, Well; women stop being women. Be people. Be people who have sex, absolutely but, don't be caricatures. Don't aim to be like a woman who looks like the outline of some playboy mudflap on a trucker's rig. Just be people. Be sexual. Enjoy your sexuality and bodies but, stop trying to bury us in tits so that we pass out and you can rifle through our bank accounts. Just stop doing that shit. I won't enable it anymore. Why does your face have to look like some half rained on Picasso water color? I don't need rainbows on the face of a woman. I don't need these weird butterfly wing goth eyebrows and shit like that. Male sexuality is demonized and female sexuality is elevated. That's bullshit. Then women wonder why men prefer porn to them. It's caus' porn doesn't nag you for wanting stuff that's defined as "kinky" or "weird". Male sexuality is demonized and held in low esteem. Woman's sexuality is always beautiful. Woman's sexuality is unremitting shallow. I'm not saying men's isn't but, we know that about men, right? What turns women on? Women say confidence. Do you know what that means? Money. Do women say " He is really confident about his sidewalk art. He is really confident about his subway busking. That's such a turn on!" Why do men like looking at naked women and women get turned on looking at clothed men? Because if a man's clothes aren't on you don't know how expensive his wardrobe is. This is what Mohammad Ali said. I'm going to throw on some old jeans and a old t-shirt and I'm just gonna walk down into some little town and find some woman who doesn't know who the hell I am and then when she's fallen in love with me and we get married, I'm going to take her to my million dollar mansion and my yacht. This is the reality. Once you start having money, once you start having power, then the true nature of massive swaths of female sexuality becomes clear.
— Stefan Molyneux
Only by entering new and unfamiliar worlds can a person change society as well as self.
— Bill Courtney, Against the Grain: A Coach's Wisdom on Character, Faith, Family, and Love
Education is the bane of life, the foundation of society and the liberation of generations.
— Mmanti Umoh
I have written in my life many critical poems, but viewed in retrospect, they were merely a human harmless reflection, and not a true likeness of the real society of today.
— Kristian Goldmund Aumann
What we are now witnessing in the 21st century is the fracture or complete breakdown of families, societies, and governments as a result of centuries of dehumanization that have taken a toll. More natural disasters (tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, etc.) merely uncover the reality of the national disasters we have created by grandting sanctuary to dehumanization via the law.
— Liza Lugo, How Do Hurricane Katrina's Winds Blow? Racism in 21st-Century New Orleans
It's significantly more satisfying to kick a wall than it is to kick thin air. For the rebellious teen- or the teen who wants to feel like a rebel- a clearly defined law gives you something to define yourself against.
— Robin Wasserman, Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader
Too many people mistook envy for happiness. They believed other people wanting to do the things they were doing was more important than doing things they wanted to do. So they'd edit their photographs and edit their lives and edit and lie until from a distance, it looked like they had the perfect life. But life isn't something that should be edited. Life shouldn't be cut. The only way you'll ever discover what it truly means to be alive and human is by sharing the full experience of what it means to be human and each blemish and freckle that comes with it.
— pleasefindthis, Intentional Dissonance
One was watching the other day a red-tailed hawk, high in the heavens, circling effortlessly, without a beat of the wing, just for the fun of flying, just to be sustained by the air-currents. Then it was joined by another, and they were flying together for quite a while. They were marvellous creatures in that blue sky, and to hurt them in any way is a crime against heaven. Of course there is no heaven; man has invented heaven out of hope, for his life has become a hell, an endless conflict from birth to death, coming and going, making money, working endlessly. This life has become a turmoil, a travail of endless striving. One wonders if man, a human being, will ever live on this earth peacefully. Conflict has been the way of his life - within the skin and outside the skin, in the area of the psyche and in the society which that psyche has created.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal
The work of an intellectual is not to form the political will of others; it is, through the analyses he does in his own domains, to bring assumptions and things taken for granted again into question, to shake habits, ways of acting and thinking, to dispel the familiarity of the accepted, to take the measure of rules and institutions and, starting from that re-problemitisation (where he plays his specific role as intellectual) to take part in the formation of a political will (where he has his role to play as citizen).
— Michel Foucault, Power
Raped at age nine by a relative and pregnant at 14 Oprah Winfrey,like many others have experienced the wickedness and brutality ofour society. Sadly, it’s an environment where blood lines no longerhold.
— Oche Otorkpa, The Unseen Terrorist
From New Delhi to New York, from Durban to Rio; women andgirls are been hunted down by rapists, abused by pedophiles andemotionally decapitated by a society that is becoming increasinglyhostile to the womenfolk
— Oche Otorkpa
The old gal was only another lonely creature in a world that didn’t care
— Charles Bukowski
Loyalty, respect for authority and some degree of sanctification create a more binding social order that places some limits on individualism and egoism.
— Jonathan Haidt
Popularity gives you power only over people who care about being popular. Ostracism gives you power only over those who fear being ostracized.
— Robin Wasserman, Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader
Be big enough to offer the truth to people and if it short circuits them I think that's tragic. I think that's sad but, I will not strike no unholy bargains to self erase. I wont do it. I don't care how many people fucked up their lives. I don't care how many bad choices people have made. I don't care how much pettiness they've consumed and spat out. I don't care how much viciousness , rage, abuse, spanking they've dealt out. I am gonna tell the truth as I see it and I'm going to be who I fucking am and if that causes the world to shift in it's orbit and half the evil people get thrown off the planet and up into space well, you shouldn't of been standing in evil to begin with because, there is gravity in goodness.So, sorry; I have to be who I am. Everyone ells is taken. There is no other place I can go than in my own head. I can't jump from skull to skull until I find one that suits bad people around me better. I don't have that choice. So, be your fucking self. Speak your truth and if there are people around you who tempt you with nonexistence , blast through that and give them the full glory of who you are. Do not withhold yourself from the world. Do not piss on the incandescent gift of your existence. Don't drown yourself in the petty fog and dustiness of other peoples ancient superstitions, beliefs, aggressions, culture, and crap. No, be a flare.We're all born self expressive. We are all born perfectly comfortable with being incredibly inconvenient to our parents. We shit, piss, wake up at night, throw up on their shoulders, scream, and cry. We are in our essence, in our humanity, perfectly comfortable with inconveniencing others. That's how we are born. That's how we grow. That's how we develop.Well, I choose to retain the ability to inconvenience the irrational. You know I had a cancer in me last year and I'm very glad that the surgeons knife and the related medicines that I took proved extremely inconvenient to my cancer and I bet you my cancer was like "Aw shit. I hate this stuff man." Good. I'm only alive because medicine and surgery was highly inconvenient to the cancer within me. That's the only reason I'm alive.So, be who you are. If that's inconvenient to other people that's their goddamn business, not yours. Do not kill yourself because other people are dead. Do not follow people into the grave. Do not atomize yourself because, others have shredded themselves into dust for the sake of their fears and their desire to conform with the history of the dead.
— Stefan Molyneux
Not just charity, even corruption begins at home.
— K. Hari Kumar
In our community, we have a duty to strengthen the weakest among us to build a better society.
— Bill Courtney, Against the Grain: A Coach's Wisdom on Character, Faith, Family, and Love
It's a matter of dishonour, and when it gets out, which it's bound to, this will be the one act you'll be remembered for. Everything else you achieved will be irrelevant. Your reputation will rest only on this, because ultimately reality is social, it's among others that we have to live and their judgements matter. - Pg. 198
— Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth
Washington was no politician as we understand the word," replied Ratcliffe abruptly. "He stood outside of politics. The thing couldn't be done today. The people don't like that sort of royal airs.
— Henry Adams, Democracy: An American Novel
Zeitgeist – spirit of the age. No such thing. Imposition by hierarchy. People rebel – & are marginalised; or follow, chained.
— Anthony   North
Consciousness is the core of humanity. It can be a curse or it can be a cure. Only humanity can decide how to break the curse and be the cure.
— Jennifer Ott, Serendipidus
I said I didn't think it would be a collectivist state so much as a wilderness in which most people lived hand to mouth, and the rich would live like princes - better than the rich had ever lived, except that their lives would constantly be in danger from the hungry predatory poor. All the technology would serve the rich, but they would need it for their own protection and to assure their continued prosperity.
— Paul Theroux, The Kingdom by the Sea
Oh, sometimes it's just easier to please people," Maria said finally.
— Lois Lowry, A Summer to Die
Society is going to judge you no matter what you do.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour
...Lance is the inevitable product of our celebrity-worshipping culture and the whole money-mad world of sports gone amok. This is the Golden Age of fraud, an era of general willingness to ignore and justify the wrongdoings of the rich and powerful, which makes every lie bigger and widens its destructive path.
— Reed Albergotti, Wheelmen: Lance Armstrong, the Tour de France, and the Greatest Sports Conspiracy Ever