Quotes on society
The human race has had long experience and a fine tradition in surviving adversity. But we now face a task for which we have little experience, the task of surviving prosperity.
Gregg, Alan
It would be a service to mankind if the pill were available in slot machines and the cigarette were placed on prescription.
Potts, Malcolm
Psychoanalysis can provide a theory of 'progress,' but only by viewing history as a neurosis.
Brown, Norman O.
The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition.
Miller, Henry
This strange disease of modern life, with its sick hurry, its divided aims.
Arnold, Matthew
The world is governed more by appearance than realities so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.
Webster, Daniel
You can say this for ready-mixes - the next generation isn't going to have any trouble making pies exactly like mother used to make.
Wilson, Earl
Oh, for the good old days when people would stop Christmas shopping when they ran out of money.
Unknown, Author
One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame, we have killed off so much real shame as well.
Kronenberger, Louis
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on the human face - forever.
Orwell, George
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
Gandhi, Mohandas K.
The secret to living contently and sanely in this modern world is to find the beautiful in the ugly - but don't get confused which is which.
Grimutter, Leslie
Noise, crowding, pollution, and the sheer rush of our complex, modern society are rapidly becoming as oppressive to many individuals as the worst kind of political dictatorship.
Eagleton, Thomas F.
If our American way of life fails the child, it fails us all.
Buck, Pearl S.
Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
Kelly, Mary Ellen
If some people got their rights they would complain of being deprived of their wrongs.
Herford, Oliver
Our society's values are being corrupted by advertising's insistence on the equation: Youth equals popularity, popularity equals success, success equals happiness.
Fisher, John
Mammalia, n. pl. A family of vertebrate animals whose females in a state of nature suckle their young, but when civilized and enlightened put them out to nurse, or use the bottle.
Bierce, Ambrose
The things that are wrong with the country today are the sum total of all the things that are wrong with us as individuals.
Tobey, Charles W.
Everything is for the eye these days - TV, Life, Look, the movies. Nothing is just for the mind. The next generation will have eyeballs as big as cantaloupes and no brain at all.
Allen, Fred
It's a sad and stupid thing to have to proclaim yourself a revolutionary just to be a decent man.
Harris, David
It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers.
Unknown, Author
There is no hope for a civilization which starts each day to the sound of an alarm clock.
Unknown, Author
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Krishnamurti, Jiddu
Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.
Lahr, John
Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
Baker, Russell
Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.
Vaughan, Bill
People have become as processed as food.
Alauda, Astrid
How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?
Sweeney, Paul
The world is so dreadfully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain.
Firbank, Ronald
If living conditions don't stop improving in this country, we're going to run out of humble beginnings for our great men.
Askue, Russell P.
So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.
George, Henry
Cell phones are the latest invention in rudeness.
Mondfleur, D.H.
Most people are willing to pay more to be amused than to be educated.
Savage, Robert C.
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
Tomlin, Lily
Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions.
Wiener, Norbert
We have produced a world of contented bodies and discontented minds.
Powell, Adam Clayton
Yes, I am positive that one of the great curatives of our evils, our maladies, social, moral, and intellectual, would be a return to the soil, a rehabilitation of the work of the fields.
Wagner, Charles
Failure seems to be regarded as the one unpardonable crime, success as the all-redeeming virtue, the acquisition of wealth as the single worthy aim of life. The hair-raising revelations of skullduggery and grand-scale thievery merely incite others to surpass by yet bolder outrages and more corrupt combinations.
Adams, Charles Francis
There comes a time when a woman needs to stop thinking about her looks and focus her energies on raising her children. This time comes at the moment of conception. A child needs a role model, not a supermodel.
Alauda, Astrid
Our current obsession with creativity is the result of our continued striving for immortality in an era when most people no longer believe in an afterlife.
Stassinopoulos, Arianna
The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenceless against ourselves.
Toynbee, Arnold
The first gold star a child gets in school for the mere performance of a needful task is its first lesson in graft.
Wylie, Philip