Oxenham Society Quotes

Humanity inevitably has to lie to itself about the achievable realities of its allegiances to the plans societies make, in order to find them desirable.

If we each undertook a personal responsibility to ensure the reasonable right for every human to live a happy, comfortable life, in spite of any allegiances, we would simultaneously prove our power as society and transform our plans into something truly desirable. ~ Brian C. Taylor

A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

A child cannot be free if his/her mother is not free. A husband cannot be free if his wife is not free. The society is nothing if women are nothing. ~ Manal Al-Sharif

I call a man a sannyasin who breaks out of these institutions and lives spontaneously. To be a sannyasin is the most courageous act possible. To be a sannyasin means to live without the mind, and the moment you live without mind you live without society. The mind has created society, and society has created the mind; they are interdependent. To be a sannyasin means to renounce all that is false but not to renounce the world, to renounce all that is unauthentic, to renounce all the answers, to be responsive, spontaneously responsive, and not to think about the reasons, but to be real. ~ Rajneesh

We all have a large stake in preserving our democracy, but I maintain that those without power in our society, the black, the brown, the poor of all colors, have the largest stake not because we have the most to lose, but because we have worked the hardest, and given the most, for what we have achieved. ~ Charles Rangel

But alas, the most terrifying aspect of the whole fascist episode is the dark fact that most of its poisons are generated not by evil men or evil peoples, but by quite ordinary men in search of an answer to the baffling problems that beset every society. Nothing could have been further from the minds of most of them than the final brutish and obscene result. The gangster comes upon the stage only when the scene has been made ready for him by his blundering precursors. ~ John T. Flynn

He had long ago learned that society imposes insults that must be borne, comforted by the knowledge that in this world there comes a time when the most humble of men, if he keeps his eyes open, can take his revenge on the most powerful. It was this knowledge that prevented the Don from losing the humility all his friends admired in him. ~ Mario Puzo

Hitherto, every form of society has been based ... on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. ~ Karl Marx

Those we most often exclude from the normal life of society, people with disabilities, have profound lessons to teach us ~ Jean Vanier

The great challenge to management today is to make productive the tremendous new resource, the knowledge worker. This, rather than the productivity of the manual worker, is the key to economic growth and economic performance in today's society. ~ Peter Drucker

The function of the well-intentioned individual, acting in isolation, is to formulate or disseminate theoretical truths. The function of the well-intentioned individuals in association is to live in accordance with those truths, to demonstrate what happens when theory is translated into practice, to create small-scale working models of the better form of society to which the speculative idealist looks forward. ~ Aldous Huxley

That society exists to frustrate the individual may be seen from its attitude to work. It is only morally acceptable if you do not want to do it. If you do want to, it becomes a personal pleasure. ~ Celia Green

Each member of society can have only a small fraction of the knowledge possessed by all, and ... each is therefore ignorant of most of the facts on which the working of society rests ... civilization rests on the fact that we all benefit from knowledge which we do not possess. And one of the ways in which civilization helps us to overcome that limitation on the extent of individual knowledge is by conquering intelligence, not by the acquisition of more knowledge, but by the utilization of knowledge which is and which remains widely dispersed among individuals. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

I know what kind of things I myself have been irritated by in detective stories. They are often about one or two persons, but they don't describe anything in the society outside. ~ Stieg Larsson

Business and its logic of productivity have become the reference point in a society that thinks marketing every time it opens its mouth. ~ Corinne Maier

We establish no religion in this country, nor will we ever. But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings. We court corruption when we leave society devoid of belief. ~ Jeff Miller

Boredom is often closely linked to resentment. When we are busy, yet wondering if our busyness means anything to anyone, we easily feel used, manipulated, and exploited. We begin to see ourselves as victims pushed around and made to do all sorts of things by people who do not really take us seriously as human beings. Then an inner anger starts to develop, an anger which in time settles into our hearts as an always fretting companion. Our hot anger gradually becomes cold anger. This "frozen anger" is the resentment which has such a poisoning effect on our society. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

We are women. We talk. We all do. I love to talk. It's my reason for being. No. It's my raison d'etre. Now that is fucking classy. Not everyone has one. A classy one. Anyway. ~ Suzy Valtsioti

Can an idea a notion as abstract as Relativism produce by itself the effects alleged? cause all the harm, destroy all the lives and reputations? I am as far as anyone can be from denying the power of ideas in history, but the suggestion that a philosophy (as Relativism is often called) has perverted millions and debased daily life is on the face of it absurd. No idea working alone has ever demoralized society, and there have been plenty of ideas simpler and more exciting than Relativism. ~ Jacques Barzun

Our laws are a reflection of our culture. Our culture does not condone the torture of innocent and defenseless creatures. And we as a society believe all God's creatures should be treated humanely. ~ Joe Moore

But we must accept one central truth and responsibility as participants in a democracy: Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society. ~ John Lewis

We can bring peace in the world, not by eliminating violence in the world, but by finding the causes of violence and by preventing those from infecting the society. ~ Debasish Mridha

As it happened, all three of us turned out to be real writers
a coincidence almost too large to be termed mere coincidence in a society where literally tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of college students aspire to the writer's trade and where bare hundreds actually break through. ~ Stephen King

The monopoly capitalists - even while employing purely empirical methods - weave around art a complicated web which converts it into a willing tool. The superstructure of society ordains the type of art in which the artist has to be educated. Rebels are subdued by its machinery and only rare talents may create their own work. The rest become shameless hacks or are crushed. ~ Che Guevara

We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Our current society is designed to achieve growth of industrial output and redistributing its
spoils. Future society must expand upon today's society's way of functioning; its institutions must be geared towards achieving more psychological goals. More goals of the soul. ~ Hanzi Freinacht

Beauty! Art! Wit!
Wonderment! Humility!
Arrogance! Style!
Virtue! Decency!
Patience!
And all the others,
Gone, trampled by the
Newly-polished jack boots
Of the clog-suited society.
I'm a stranger here, from
Another planet;
Not spotted yet, but
Getting peculiar stares>
Forbidden entrance to
All the places where
Air remains,
Where green is true
and water unmolested.
In any other time,
(Excepting Attila's)
I'd be a hero.
Why, they'd even name
An alley after me
And put a blotting-paper
Plaque on all my doors.
Not because I was great
But because I insisted on
All the words and ways rejected by
Those who wait ferally
In the ancient trees. ~ Alec Wilder

It is hard to read a newspaper or watch a television newscast without encountering someone who has come up with a new 'solution' to society's 'problems.' ~ Thomas Sowell

The social mould civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns. I am called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name. But I am not really Mrs. Richard Phillotson, but a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies ... ~ Thomas Hardy

Marital intercourse is certainly holy, lawful and praiseworthy in itself and profitable to society, yet in certain circumstances it can prove dangerous, as when through excess the soul is made sick with venial sin, or through the violation and perversion of its primary end, killed by mortal sin; such perversion, detestable in proportion to its departure from the true order, being always mortal sin, for it is never lawful to exclude the primary end of marriage which is the procreation of children. ~ Saint Francis De Sales

Secular society has been unfairly impoverished by the loss of an array of practices and themes which atheists typically find it impossible to live with because they seem too closely associated with, to quote Nietzsche's useful phrase, 'the bad odours of religion'. We have grown frightened of the word morality. We bridle at the thought of hearing a sermon. We flee from the idea that art should be uplifting or have an ethical mission. We don't go on pilgrimages. We can't build temples. We have no mechanisms for expressing gratitude. Strangers rarely sing together. We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society. ~ Alain De Botton

As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship. ~ John Paul Stevens

It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual
and after all what is an individual?" With a sweeping gesture he indicated the rows of microscopes, the test-tubes, the incubators. "We can make a new one with the greatest ease
As many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the lie of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself," he repeated. ~ Aldous Huxley

You must be more committed to the truth of God's word and what is right than the flaws in our society. ~ Sunday Adelaja

In a society like ours, politics is improvisation. To the artful dodger rather than the true believer goes the prize. ~ Gore Vidal

Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male's superiority. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

In a society where every man works for himself, individual incentive, working for one's self. If people worked for one's self, there wouldn't be the electric light, there wouldn't be engines and powered vehicles, there wouldn't be electrification and reservoirs and water purification. These are processes that help all people. And processes that help single people is a very primitive value system carried into this century, which is really not necessary. ~ Jacque Fresco

The argument about ethics and morality will have to go on in a post-religious society, just as it had to go on when religion was regnant and was often ordering good people to agree to evil things such as torture, slavery, or cruelty to children. ~ Christopher Hitchens

U.S. society, after all, continues to be starkly segregated along class and race lines, never allowing people to have the sort of interactions necessary to undo prejudices, stereotypes, and oppressions. ~ Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

I wanted to go in one direction, but my father forced me to follow his direction, and, somehow, he won. In one of these compelling situations, he wanted me to join the police force, but he had previously said that I didn't have the bastard brains to pass my driving test. What a contradiction of terms? ~ Stephen Richards

Any society that does not succeed in tapping into the energy and creativity of its youth will be left behind. ~ Kofi Annan

Our triumphant age of plenty is riddled with darker feelings of doubt, cynicism, distrust, boredom and a strange kind of emptiness ~ Samuel Johnson

When a man and woman have sexual relations, who gets the
most out of the deal? The man, or the woman? Since we live in a society
full of tricks, the man thinks he gets more out of the encounter.
But what do men really get out of it? The reality is that women have
the potential to get more out of it than the man, especially if the
man's seeds have accumulated a certain amount of value. ~ Tariq Nasheed

Moreover, there is an unearned increment on capital and on labor, due to the presence, around the capitalist and the laborer, of a great, industrious, and prosperous society. ~ William Graham Sumner

Terrorists in 6 weeks have been able to command 300 million North Americans to do away with the entirety of their civil liberties that took 700 years to advance from the Magna Carta onward. The terrorists have already won the political and ideological war with one terrorist act. It is mindboggling that we are that weak as a society. ~ Rocco Galati

Most people want so desperately to be an individual yet are so easily shaped by the media. ~ Criss Jami